With Summer at an end and the year coming to a close, New York rapper Nas is determined to drop a new album before the end of 07.
“I celebrated having another #1 album in the country,” he told MTV of his last LP, Hip Hop Is Dead.
“I was on the Virgin Islands on New Year’s Day, I got the news I had another #1 album. I think I made some heads turn. I did my thing: no radio. Not much radio spins. Now I wanna have fun with the radio. I’ll still try to reach for a higher ground and come sometime in December.
“I’m really into [the idea of having] a summer album,” he continued. “But they say the fourth quarter is for big dogs. I been doing the fourth quarter for years, so I guess I’m at home in the fourth.”
Nas, who released a mixtape earlier this year with Black Eyed Peas’ Will.I.Am, expects to release some of the new material as early as next month.
He also hasn’t ruled out the possibility of working with the legendary Dj Premiere.
“I can’t reveal it yet,” he said. “But if you remember, the original name for Hip Hop Is Dead was Nigga. It was ahead of its time. [When the news leaked,] Def Jam immediately went out there and said I was being facetious. But that was the name of my album.
I don’t be out there with everybody. But I want them to know I’m heavily involved. That’s why I do the titles I do. Hip Hop Is Dead was a great substitute. It was perfect timing for that joint.”
Though Hip Hop Is Dead became the number 1 record in the country without much promotion [aside from the controversy], Nas plans to go all out this time around and was disappointed with the lack of interest in the video(s) created for the singles.
“Yeah, man, I like to just put it out there that we shot a video for ‘Hustlers,’ ” Nas explained. “These guys still got the video, actually. The guy who shot the video, [R.] Malcolm Jones, is a different type of cat, man. I don’t know what’s going on with it, but they took too long. They been needing time. Then Spike Lee was set to [direct] ‘Black Republican,’ but me and Spike couldn’t come up with the perfect idea, so we let it ride as one of them tracks that was just there. [Hip Hop Is Dead] to me was gonna be shot like Thriller. But sometimes I feel like I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna hog up the radio waves, hog up the video waves. I let everybody else eat, ‘cause I’m eating. Been eating for so many years. I ain’t hogging it up. That’s basically it.”
“I gotta hog it up,[this time]” he told MTV. “People think [the videos] didn’t happen ‘cause it couldn’t happen, and that’s fucked up ‘cause I leave a lot of my listeners out there and they be fighting for me. I don’t wanna feel like I’m leaving them out there. Just ‘cause I’m in the cut, I don’t want them to feel like I don’t give a fuck. Everybody else is doing as many videos as they want to. When it came to me, I was cool with it. I have a lot of real niggas out here that’s behind me and fuck with me. I’m so in love with them real niggas, I don’t see nobody else. But I need to push my shit. It’s important. It’s the norm.”
