Speaker 1: Pushkin, Naz dropped one of the most universally loved rap
Speaker 1: albums of all time with Illmatic. Since releasing that homage
Speaker 1: to the gritty streets of his childhood home, Queensbridge, Naz
Speaker 1: has remained one of the greatest mcs of all time.
Speaker 1: I made the fade, famous to change, Famous, Jubio man,
Speaker 1: chess mast, stainless, amazing, grace, imbraceably aged. With a few
Speaker 1: legends in hip hop have been able to maintain the
Speaker 1: relevance over several decades based on their skill alone, Naz
Speaker 1: has never chased headlines or crossover success. He's always seemed
Speaker 1: focused on elevating his craft in the culture, and that
Speaker 1: dedications paid off King's Disease as Naza's twelfth album and
Speaker 1: earned him his fourteenth Grammy nomination. It's up for Best
Speaker 1: Rap Album at this year's awards. Rick Rubin connected with
Speaker 1: NOAs over Zoom recently to talk about his earliest experiences
Speaker 1: with rapping queens how recording his last album with Kanye
Speaker 1: West and Wayoming almost took him out of his own
Speaker 1: and how early beef of jay Z made them both
Speaker 1: stronger rappers. This is broken record liner notes for the
Speaker 1: digital age I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin with Nasty Nos.
Speaker 1: What's going on? Legend? Everything's well? How are you, sir? Yo?
Speaker 1: This is It's an honor to talk to you. Man
Speaker 1: the same. It's my pleasure always anytime I get to
Speaker 1: see you, it's a good day. Love man. Tell me
Speaker 1: about the music in your house when you were growing up. Huh,
Speaker 1: My mom was playing What's you Gonna Do with My
Speaker 1: Loving that? Stephanie Mills, Patty, you know all the records
Speaker 1: that was out, Like I remember the early eighties records,
Speaker 1: and then my pops was playing a wide range of
Speaker 1: of things. He had everything from the radio station with
Speaker 1: Wolfman Jack. He had fail and things like that, you know,
Speaker 1: Jazz whatever, Lionel, Richie whatever, all those early eighties records,
Speaker 1: early seventy nine. I grew up at right around that
Speaker 1: time when like the these are the breaks and rappers delight.
Speaker 1: I was young, but I was absorbing that stuff. Would
Speaker 1: you say that the music in that your parents played
Speaker 1: was reflective of the other music that the kids in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood would be hearing. Are not necessarily not necessarily
Speaker 1: you think because of your dad's jazz background, Because the
Speaker 1: kids a lot of the kids parents, I think were
Speaker 1: younger than my parents. A lot of my friends parents
Speaker 1: most of them were younger than my parents, and they
Speaker 1: were playing the music of their time. I think my pops,
Speaker 1: my pops, he's from Mississippi, you know, and he get
Speaker 1: he got everything that was going on out there and
Speaker 1: what they were playing with the other people parents that
Speaker 1: uh and the radios was playing. But we didn't play
Speaker 1: that in the house all the time. Now, It wasn't
Speaker 1: like I didn't own all of those records. When I
Speaker 1: started buying records, it was it was like I was
Speaker 1: the record buying the house. He had jazz records, but
Speaker 1: in African records and stuff, but it wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of music like you would think. Do you think that um,
Speaker 1: having those influences affected your both appreciation of music and
Speaker 1: the way that you wrote going forward. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: sounds was like disco and R and B was was
Speaker 1: a thing. And the songs to me, they were like, um,
Speaker 1: they were rap songs before they were rap songs like
Speaker 1: over like a fat rat and um, you know Evelyn
Speaker 1: Champagne king. To me, they you know, we would move
Speaker 1: our head to it, like you know, that's the jam
Speaker 1: and that. So when I wanted to you know, when
Speaker 1: Sugarhill Gang had the the Good Times record and they
Speaker 1: flipped it, it was just rapping. I tried to rap
Speaker 1: like them. I tried to I tried to rap like
Speaker 1: Um Um Curtis Blow. So that's that's when I first
Speaker 1: started to feel rapped like Curtis and Um and those guys.
Speaker 1: Tela rocking them, your guys, was your first experience of
Speaker 1: hip hop music from those records? Or was it in
Speaker 1: the park first? It was a combination of both. It
Speaker 1: was a combination because when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: would hear all the guys talking about, you know, who
Speaker 1: was at the center last night, and the community Center
Speaker 1: at night turned into I guess like a club or
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, and in the park a lot of
Speaker 1: guys would come out there. I would hear all of
Speaker 1: these rapped legends were in the park and and hear
Speaker 1: all these stories. So yeah, it was definitely in the park,
Speaker 1: but it was a combination as a park. And then
Speaker 1: somebody's radio describe more about like the the what was
Speaker 1: going on in the park and what was going on
Speaker 1: in the community center. Paint the picture and I just
Speaker 1: love to imagine what you saw, all right. So with
Speaker 1: the community center parties, I was definitely too young for that.
Speaker 1: I would see all the people going dressed up. If
Speaker 1: it was winter, they had the sheepskin coats on. They
Speaker 1: would excite it like I thought they were going to
Speaker 1: some big play. I don't know where. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: they were going right to the community center, right in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, because you're talking, I'm talking eighty three eighty five,
Speaker 1: you know. And in the park they had, you know,
Speaker 1: people would come there and they have like set up
Speaker 1: a stage like I don't know, the city would have
Speaker 1: people come out there, set up a stage and do
Speaker 1: shows Like I'm looking at people in costumes and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Just wild stuff I would see in the parks.
Speaker 1: And then the jams will happen. When when I got
Speaker 1: when they got to the park jams, you know, my
Speaker 1: moms didn't want me to go over there. So we
Speaker 1: could hear it from across the street. We could watch them,
Speaker 1: even help them carry records. You know, you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna throw a part, You're gonna throw a jam. We
Speaker 1: see them coming through the block with the equipment. Get
Speaker 1: out the way, look, get out the way kids and
Speaker 1: we want to We were excited seeing this happen. They
Speaker 1: were homemade speakers, all this um um the wires where
Speaker 1: they would uh take electricity from the street lamp and
Speaker 1: and and plug it up to the equipment outside and
Speaker 1: watch the cops ride around to make sure everything was okay,
Speaker 1: tell them to turn it down, and then they leave,
Speaker 1: and then they turn it back up, and the cops
Speaker 1: just got tired of messing with them. They just let it,
Speaker 1: let it play so um. And then I got a
Speaker 1: little older. I think it was like the end of
Speaker 1: the community center. I remember, Um, they're being MC battles
Speaker 1: in there is mcs from my block. Um, the illmatic mcs.
Speaker 1: They were from my block, you know, Sudan and these
Speaker 1: guys who I looked up to, who who were really
Speaker 1: good at what they did. I would I would listen
Speaker 1: to them wrapped here and there. But um, how much
Speaker 1: older were they than you? I want to say maybe
Speaker 1: five years maybe with five five note because then I
Speaker 1: was like maybe about six seven years. Some of them
Speaker 1: are little older. But Jeff Rod from my building was
Speaker 1: known for doing needle lifting. You know, he didn't even
Speaker 1: have to he just knew where to lift the needle.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't. I don't even think he had headphones on.
Speaker 1: He just knew and he was legendary for that. The
Speaker 1: Old Brothers were in my building. They made speakers that
Speaker 1: was so big they just would rattle the building, and
Speaker 1: they won the first floor and I was on the
Speaker 1: fifth floor, but we enjoyed it. It It would rattle the building.
Speaker 1: But because the speakers were so big, they couldn't even
Speaker 1: get him through the apartment door to take outside. But
Speaker 1: the sound on it was incredible. It's amazing the home
Speaker 1: grown aspects of the hip hop culture that most people
Speaker 1: don't know about. You know, most people experience if they
Speaker 1: come from somewhere else, if they weren't from New York
Speaker 1: at that period of time, they experienced it as you
Speaker 1: know songs that came on the radio. But there was
Speaker 1: a whole culture and life around hip hop music where
Speaker 1: it's the music was just part of it. There was
Speaker 1: so much to it right right, definitely, there was so
Speaker 1: much to it. And you know, the style of clothes
Speaker 1: everyone was wearing because at the time, you know, pumas
Speaker 1: and all these different sneakers was getting taken off your
Speaker 1: feet like if you had if you had a fresh
Speaker 1: prayer of sneakers on and you come to that park, jam,
Speaker 1: I'd see somebody running. I see people want your sneakers,
Speaker 1: like just to you know, that's so funny. I was
Speaker 1: talking to somebody the other day, how everybody's iced out now.
Speaker 1: It's so much better now. You couldn't even wear a
Speaker 1: gold name plate back in those days, just a regular
Speaker 1: goal thin nameplate like Rais or blade thin on your
Speaker 1: on your net. You couldn't even wear you We'd have
Speaker 1: to watch where you go some places with that. So
Speaker 1: all of that added to it. It put it was
Speaker 1: in the energy of the music. I think when did
Speaker 1: you first start writing? I think um, early eighties. It
Speaker 1: was rest in peace to my man Andre Herrell. I
Speaker 1: would tell him this all the time, him and his
Speaker 1: guy in the group, doctor jackoman Us to hide. They
Speaker 1: they had a story mister shark in the ocean, can
Speaker 1: you find my magic potion? And I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: how did the story start here? And then help me
Speaker 1: that well, I don't know, but you know Slick Rick
Speaker 1: with Lottie Dotty, So those those those people made me like,
Speaker 1: you know, even uh my man Mellie mel and Raheemu
Speaker 1: Raheem's verse on Um the Message and Mellie mel the
Speaker 1: way closes it out. Um those though, they would like
Speaker 1: put pictures in my mind, and I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I can write from that perspective. You know, all these guys,
Speaker 1: did you did you know that it was something that
Speaker 1: you wanted to do, like that you were going to
Speaker 1: dedicate your life to it. You know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was really possible to really get into the rap game.
Speaker 1: I know I wanted to. I know I could picture
Speaker 1: myself in it since I mean since I first started
Speaker 1: hearing rap. You know, I know I could picture myself
Speaker 1: in it. I would hear like tapes by the Cold
Speaker 1: Crush Brothers, but not really paying attention because even though
Speaker 1: it was the most popping tape out to me, I
Speaker 1: can hear the time in their voice. I can hear
Speaker 1: the time and the beat, the sound. I knew that
Speaker 1: it wasn't for me at that time. I said, end
Speaker 1: time will be my time. But I didn't pay too
Speaker 1: much attention to those tastes because I felt like it's
Speaker 1: like trying to play a kid. Frank Sinatra, who I
Speaker 1: love now, but it's like I don't get it, but
Speaker 1: you get older, you get what they meant at the time.
Speaker 1: But those were the times I would hear a little
Speaker 1: bit of bits and pieces and still, you know, try
Speaker 1: to emulate that. What was the first the first record
Speaker 1: that you heard where it's like, oh, this is this
Speaker 1: is not the older kids music anymore, this is my music.
Speaker 1: I mean I knew it when I heard the breaks.
Speaker 1: Cut your hands, everybody, if you got what it takes
Speaker 1: by Curtis Blow, Curtis Blow, and I want you to
Speaker 1: know that there it was grown folks music. It had
Speaker 1: a disco sound, but the way he commanded your attention
Speaker 1: on the song, I knew and like he didn't have
Speaker 1: to be a singer to demand that type of respect
Speaker 1: that a singer would demand on a record. The way
Speaker 1: he spoke, his pronunciation, in what he would do with
Speaker 1: his voice, and the breakdowns of the song would make
Speaker 1: me go, Okay, this is this could this is a
Speaker 1: big record. It's not an underground record, it's not a mixtape,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a record record on a label that's known.
Speaker 1: What was the record label, um Mercury, I think Mercury exactly.
Speaker 1: That was a known label. So that's what I knew,
Speaker 1: Like Okay, this thing is a real record. How did
Speaker 1: your parents react to hip hop? My pops was was
Speaker 1: cool with it. My mom was cool with it too,
Speaker 1: but I guess she didn't want me and my brother
Speaker 1: to grow up to be like, like, you know, too
Speaker 1: hard whatever or two hoodlums or you know whatever they
Speaker 1: called it back then, and show I would repeat. You know,
Speaker 1: a son said, Daddy, I don't want to go to
Speaker 1: school because my teacher's a jerk. She might think I'm
Speaker 1: a fool, and all the kids smoke griefa. I think
Speaker 1: it'd be cheaper if, you know. She's like, what you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, and she's like, Nah, that ain't
Speaker 1: that ain't for you. But I'm like laughing. I'm like,
Speaker 1: it is because we're all we're all little kids, not
Speaker 1: supposed to be singing these songs, but they're so dope
Speaker 1: around each other. We say we're singing, we're singing the message.
Speaker 1: You asked your dad to play on your first record.
Speaker 1: He played trumpet on your first records? That correct, right?
Speaker 1: How did that come together? Like the idea of you'd
Speaker 1: never hear a solo on a hip hop record, How
Speaker 1: did you know to do it well? Because it's pops,
Speaker 1: you know, mister Olu Dara. He is before my time musically,
Speaker 1: of course, but now here it is. I am with
Speaker 1: a record deal with Columbia Records. I'm like, yo, yo,
Speaker 1: this is so cool. Your son's on Columbia Records, rough House, Columbia,
Speaker 1: I have an album. This is a dream that we
Speaker 1: could do something together. So I called him, you know,
Speaker 1: and I told him when he got to the studio,
Speaker 1: I said, play what reminds you of me and my
Speaker 1: brother and our family when we were kids. Just play
Speaker 1: whatever that feels like to you. Beautiful and uh, he
Speaker 1: played that beautiful. We'll be right back with more from
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin and Nas after the break, We're back with
Speaker 1: more of Rick Rubin's conversation with Nas. Tell me about
Speaker 1: getting signed. Tell me about the feeling of what was
Speaker 1: going on, what you had done at that point, and
Speaker 1: then the excitement of that moment. Man, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a moment that I felt like it was coming.
Speaker 1: I felt like it was it was possible, um and
Speaker 1: when it came, I felt of course, of course, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm happy, you know, beyond happy, because I'm I'm with
Speaker 1: Columbia Records. Now, I mean shout out to Chris Schwartz
Speaker 1: and Roughhouse, shout out to Faith Newman who signed me.
Speaker 1: Shout out to MC search who helped put that deal together.
Speaker 1: And I was happy to be involved with so many
Speaker 1: creative people like those people I named, people who are
Speaker 1: to me vets in the music business. So I felt
Speaker 1: like I was gonna be kind of protected with you know,
Speaker 1: just with the tutelage and from these guys. I felt
Speaker 1: like I was in a safe situation. So it was
Speaker 1: it was like a super dream come true. It was
Speaker 1: it was like, this is what we all looking for
Speaker 1: right here, and it's happening great. And tell me about
Speaker 1: the making of the first album, the process of it.
Speaker 1: The making of the first album was like now things
Speaker 1: are real. Now the studios are real. Now Out had
Speaker 1: worked in power Play studios with Lars Professor years ago before,
Speaker 1: well like two years before I actually got a deal.
Speaker 1: I've been in power playing. That's a serious place. But
Speaker 1: now it's here, my budget, my album for me, not
Speaker 1: just hanging out with Lars Professor. So now I'm here
Speaker 1: in the house of Metal chun King. Now I'm I'm
Speaker 1: looking at these plaques on the wall and all these
Speaker 1: great artists and the studio is real. The engineer, I
Speaker 1: never met him before, but he's about to be in
Speaker 1: my life now and I'm learning from him and he's
Speaker 1: learning about me at the same time. So I kind
Speaker 1: of like a fish to water because of the previous
Speaker 1: experience with Las Professor, and he's telling me not to
Speaker 1: pop your ps so loud in the microphone. He's telling
Speaker 1: me how to even stand at the microphone. So I
Speaker 1: had some experience, and then I was working with him also,
Speaker 1: so it was like we were both happy because he
Speaker 1: was a wild pitch cool label, but now here I
Speaker 1: am on this major label. So we would kind of smiling, laughing,
Speaker 1: like Okay, this is the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: So we went to it like like we was waiting
Speaker 1: from two years ago to now I'm eighteen. I got
Speaker 1: this deal, It's go time. It was like we just
Speaker 1: went and the were the songs written before you went
Speaker 1: into the studio. Tell me about the process of getting
Speaker 1: the material together. Yeah, half of the half of the
Speaker 1: material was already done. And when I got to the studio,
Speaker 1: when I when we started to record, I came up
Speaker 1: with a lot of things right there on the spot
Speaker 1: as well, but I would say about fifty percent was wrote.
Speaker 1: And might you write without hearing a beat? Or we're
Speaker 1: do you always write based on a beat? Back? Then
Speaker 1: I wrote to different beats, Like whatever I thought was
Speaker 1: a dope record out, I would get the instrumental and
Speaker 1: just sloop that and right to that, like whoever's record
Speaker 1: that I thought was hot. And then when I went
Speaker 1: to the studio, I would find the timing of the
Speaker 1: rhyme to that beat, to the new beat, my actual beat.
Speaker 1: I would find which rap had the timing that would
Speaker 1: blend in that beat, right understood. So you typically write
Speaker 1: to a beat that would be not the beat that
Speaker 1: we hear on the record, But then you would find
Speaker 1: a beat that would work, a new beat that would
Speaker 1: work for something you already wrote something else exactly cool,
Speaker 1: And some of it I did get the tracks and
Speaker 1: write to it, Like um when Q Tip produced One Love,
Speaker 1: I did get that on cassette tape and took it
Speaker 1: home to write to it. I did get some of
Speaker 1: the tracks and right there in the studio, like with Premiere,
Speaker 1: I wrote some of it right there in the studio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with lis my Man. Dj elis from my neighborhood. Who
Speaker 1: produced the song that my Pops is on Life's a Bitch.
Speaker 1: I wrote that right there on the spot. So some
Speaker 1: of it was just spontaneous. Others was like pieces of
Speaker 1: papers that I had just had a beginning, like maybe
Speaker 1: like six bars, and I like this six bars, and
Speaker 1: I match it up with another song. Another rhyme I
Speaker 1: had was probably had like twelve bars, and and then
Speaker 1: and then I would write the last you know, four
Speaker 1: or five bars or whatever. Would you always be writing?
Speaker 1: Would you always be taking notes in general? Yeah? Years
Speaker 1: ago when I was coming out of a teenager into
Speaker 1: like my early twenties. Yeah, then I then just everything
Speaker 1: just roller coast. So tell me about the experience of
Speaker 1: going from really starting from essentially nothing. Not really you
Speaker 1: came from the very beginning, and you built yourself up
Speaker 1: to be the number one MC in New York No,
Speaker 1: like without question, and in your fantasy of what it
Speaker 1: was going to be like what your life would be
Speaker 1: like in success? How different is the reality of success
Speaker 1: versus the fantasy of success. It's strange. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone has their own journey. Um. At times it was
Speaker 1: better than I imagine. At other times it was like
Speaker 1: what's going on? Like you know. Um, so it would
Speaker 1: it would change, it would change. Sometimes it would really
Speaker 1: feel like this must be like what you know. Stevie
Speaker 1: Wonder was feeling like, this must be like what what what?
Speaker 1: Michael was feeling like. You had those moments, whether it
Speaker 1: was like, uh, first time at an award show or
Speaker 1: meeting somebody you never thought you'd meet and they like you,
Speaker 1: those are those are really good moments there. So it changed.
Speaker 1: And then give me an example of something that you
Speaker 1: thought was going to be really good that turned out
Speaker 1: not to live up to them. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: it was, Um, I don't know. It's certain. There's certain
Speaker 1: aspects of of certain people I thought would be different,
Speaker 1: and um, they were not the nicest people. But I
Speaker 1: appreciate the experience. Even though I looked at these people
Speaker 1: like I had to realize their human beings like everyone else.
Speaker 1: They have their bad days and their good days. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, realizing people are not superheroes really all the time.
Speaker 1: You know these people that you look up to people. Um,
Speaker 1: certain places I went to a smaller than I thought,
Speaker 1: like TV sets, TV stages, sound stages, or certain television
Speaker 1: shows or you know, things like that. Have you ever
Speaker 1: eaten four gro in real life, I have I have Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just asking because it's it's a funny. It's like
Speaker 1: we think about rap brags and that might not live
Speaker 1: up to their actual I'm not a fan of foire
Speaker 1: gross I had. I tried it before. I tried it before,
Speaker 1: but I'm not a fan. It just sounds good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it also does sound good in a rhyme like just
Speaker 1: the nature the words sounds good. Yes, it sounds good.
Speaker 1: Tell me about spirituality. Have you do you have a
Speaker 1: spiritual practice or have you ever in your life? Um,
Speaker 1: there's no real practice. Um, I'm just aware, you know,
Speaker 1: you're just aware that where where we're having a spiritual
Speaker 1: beings having a human experience and we're just there has
Speaker 1: to be more than here, you know. Um, And that
Speaker 1: energy is real and you just want to keep the
Speaker 1: energy around you. Um. Good and and and you want
Speaker 1: to keep because energy lives forever. In my mind, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like we go on to see the big
Speaker 1: Man upstairs from here. So do what you do here matters.
Speaker 1: On the other side, also, how you how how do
Speaker 1: you handle your business? You know, if you have to
Speaker 1: do something that's not so great to get somewhere great.
Speaker 1: You know, you just hope that most high forgives you
Speaker 1: because we're all just on our own journey. So you
Speaker 1: have to realize that there's a there's karma and everything
Speaker 1: you do, so you try to keep that when nobody's perfect.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not perfect. I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: you know, on point all the time. But you just
Speaker 1: hope that I try to stay in the right the
Speaker 1: right calma, the right energy. Has having kids changed your
Speaker 1: life big time? Big time? Yeah? I think my daughter
Speaker 1: saved my life. She she she I was really young
Speaker 1: when I had I was twenty years old, so I
Speaker 1: was I was a kid. So um, I think she
Speaker 1: she made me pay attention and say, you gotta be here.
Speaker 1: You can't just throw it all in a wind. You
Speaker 1: have to, you know, be cautious. You gotta be here.
Speaker 1: My son too, my son as well. Do you get
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time with them now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially my daughter. You know, that's that's like my bestie.
Speaker 1: That's great, That's that's my homie right there. She's very
Speaker 1: she's busy in her life, but you know she's she's
Speaker 1: into a lot of things, cosmetics being one of those
Speaker 1: she has a company called lip Matic, and she's into
Speaker 1: the arts. You know, she's into all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So she's busy. But we do get together. My son
Speaker 1: not so much. He doesn't live as close to me
Speaker 1: as her, But there's always a great time either way,
Speaker 1: you know, Beautiful. Tell me about you got to work
Speaker 1: with with so many of the great hip hop producers
Speaker 1: over the years. Just tell me about the differences between
Speaker 1: working with different people. Oh man, Um, when I work
Speaker 1: with say Doctor Dre, I hear he's he's recovering right now. Um.
Speaker 1: Prayers going out to him and his family. Working with
Speaker 1: Doctor Dre is someone who's right there, can create there
Speaker 1: on the spot, um, and there's no telling how far
Speaker 1: can go. He You you start with just one sound,
Speaker 1: and his his his ear is he's like he's like
Speaker 1: he's putting the sounds in a movie. It's that's that's
Speaker 1: the way I see him doing hip hop. And he
Speaker 1: just loves the most hardest shit you know, and he
Speaker 1: wants to make it happen as big as possible, make
Speaker 1: it sound as big as possible, as right as possible.
Speaker 1: Working with somebody like Havoc from Mob Deep, not only
Speaker 1: did I know him since we were little kids, you know,
Speaker 1: and we come from the same neighborhood, we're around the
Speaker 1: same age, and we grew up on the same sounds
Speaker 1: in the same city. So work with him is this
Speaker 1: really grimy stuff, hard stuff. And it's like his beats
Speaker 1: are talking to me and I can hear I could
Speaker 1: hear having spirit in the beat, and it's like it
Speaker 1: makes you really want to get down on the beat.
Speaker 1: Working with somebody like um Kanye, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: this guy who can take he could do, he could
Speaker 1: do electronic, he could do so, he could do, he
Speaker 1: could do rock, he could do and his all, his
Speaker 1: all with his spirit on it. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no levels to how big it can go.
Speaker 1: It could just could go anywhere. Um. So everyone has
Speaker 1: a different approach to it because we all love this culture,
Speaker 1: we all love this this this art form, and we're
Speaker 1: all trying to make the stuff that blew our minds
Speaker 1: when we were kids. I guess do you remember the
Speaker 1: first time you heard an MC where you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: this is something new and this is great and you
Speaker 1: were like excited about like someone taking it to a
Speaker 1: new place that you hadn't heard before. Um, there was
Speaker 1: a couple of times, but the one that comes to
Speaker 1: mind right now is Um the Educated Rapper from Utfo
Speaker 1: on the song Rock Sand Rock Sand And I liked
Speaker 1: that he was called the educated rapper. It was like
Speaker 1: he had this sona he had. He was a character almost,
Speaker 1: But with rap music, you're using words, So to be
Speaker 1: educated means he's got a plethora of words. So when
Speaker 1: he was just like, you know the way his flow was,
Speaker 1: and I said, wow, you know you can you could.
Speaker 1: There's many styles to this, but even the Fat Boys,
Speaker 1: even even cool Rock Ski and and and and um
Speaker 1: and my Man's you know what I'm saying. Um, they
Speaker 1: was like they had me trying to rap like them.
Speaker 1: So it was everybody everybody at that time, you know.
Speaker 1: But Shan also from our neighborhood, who could tell a
Speaker 1: story and take you right in, you know, songs like
Speaker 1: Jane Stopped this Crazy Thing, Um the Bridge that was
Speaker 1: our anthem, our neighborhood. UM. So so many different artists
Speaker 1: would bring you something that was different. You know. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with Nahs after the break. We're back with Rick,
Speaker 1: Rubin and Nas talking about why rap battles changed over
Speaker 1: the years and about the once famous beef between him
Speaker 1: and jay Z that led to some of the best
Speaker 1: disc records of all time. Was the Bridge the first
Speaker 1: battle record you heard? I think so, I think so.
Speaker 1: But there were there were a couple of disc songs
Speaker 1: out at the time. I think there was a Salt
Speaker 1: and Pepper disc too. Don't get me wrong. I'm my
Speaker 1: bad if I'm saying this wrong. It was all in
Speaker 1: fun back then. But it was like a like Salton
Speaker 1: Pepper I think had something against Dougie Fresh and to
Speaker 1: get Fresh Crew and so I had heard, but nothing
Speaker 1: with the magnitude of the Bridge South Bronx, the Bridges
Speaker 1: over kill at noise, nothing like that ever. And would
Speaker 1: you say that that was like two teams, like rival
Speaker 1: teams sports teams. Definitely, definitely. I mean it started with
Speaker 1: Rock San Chantay, you know, take my hat off to
Speaker 1: the Queen. Then she went after Utfo and you know
Speaker 1: it was it was on. But yeah, there was my
Speaker 1: hood and it was the South Bronx. It was Queen's
Speaker 1: Bread South Bronx, Queen's Bronx. But the Boroughs were all
Speaker 1: they was all gunning for the top spot in New York.
Speaker 1: So you had the Brooklyns in the House record. Um,
Speaker 1: you know you had your you had your everybody Komode
Speaker 1: and Harlem. Um, you had the Bronx, you had you know,
Speaker 1: so everybody was just trying to be that number one,
Speaker 1: that number one place. But it was always from a
Speaker 1: point of view of like out wrapping the other. In
Speaker 1: the early days, it never felt like there was any
Speaker 1: real beef. It was more like performance. It wasn't actually
Speaker 1: a fight. A fight would back then with me and
Speaker 1: you was the sole loser. You know, like back then
Speaker 1: it was like who's really the best at this? A
Speaker 1: fight would just make mess the whole thing. You weren't
Speaker 1: the best at this if you had to fight, right,
Speaker 1: if you was that mad about it to fight, you lost.
Speaker 1: So you would have to show improve with your with
Speaker 1: your talent back then, and that's that's what built That's
Speaker 1: what the legs of this thing is. Those guys who
Speaker 1: would competing with each other. Um. One of the most
Speaker 1: famous uh hip hop rivalries was between you and Jay
Speaker 1: back in the day. And what did it feel like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, being the subject when you were the subject
Speaker 1: of a of a disrecord or a challenge. Was that
Speaker 1: justum proof that you were the top guy was at
Speaker 1: the What was the feeling of that? Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: all of that, and it was like the you know
Speaker 1: it just the auto M seeing was right there on
Speaker 1: full display. It was like, if you're in the rap game,
Speaker 1: this can happen a battle and it was like, that's
Speaker 1: this rap thing is real, Like a battle can really happen,
Speaker 1: you know. So I was honored to to have that
Speaker 1: part of my life happened because that's what that's how
Speaker 1: I saw the Great Stewart coming up. I saw some
Speaker 1: of the Great Stewart. It actually shed light on both
Speaker 1: of you. Like at the time, it felt like in
Speaker 1: the back and forth, it elevated everybody. Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's again it's about the art of MCing and when
Speaker 1: you're when you're trying to UM make the best stuff
Speaker 1: you can make, and do you bump heads with another
Speaker 1: MC and then you guys have a war whatever. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's what this art form was was since the
Speaker 1: beginn just double trouble and and busy being cool. You know.
Speaker 1: But that's what I like about hip hop compared to
Speaker 1: other genres is that they go at it in hip hop,
Speaker 1: you know, like really at it, not to say that
Speaker 1: other rockers didn't go at it, Other reggae artists didn't
Speaker 1: go at other schrooners didn't go at it. But the
Speaker 1: hip hop will always be around, I think because of
Speaker 1: how competitive it is. Well, it's the last time you
Speaker 1: were in Queen's Bridge. Um, I did my last I
Speaker 1: did to not see a album with Kanye. I did
Speaker 1: the party there and then did the after party and
Speaker 1: the actual projects because we were under the bridge for
Speaker 1: the album released party and then went inside the projects
Speaker 1: where I went inside the projects and party hung out
Speaker 1: all night. How did it feel? What were the memories
Speaker 1: that came up when you were there? I mean, I
Speaker 1: do it. I do it from time to time. So
Speaker 1: usually I go there, kids are not up. I go
Speaker 1: at night and I hang with the fellas. We don't
Speaker 1: put it on camera, we don't tape it, but countless
Speaker 1: nights I've been there. So it was just another night.
Speaker 1: But this night was great because underneath the bridge there's
Speaker 1: where those legendary artists you would come to when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and we kind of had it in
Speaker 1: the same area. So it was I was like lifted
Speaker 1: up to another consciousness and everything a spiritual feeling. Happened.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was doing what was right in
Speaker 1: the community for the art of it. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's years later. I've had parties everywhere for our release parties,
Speaker 1: but to have one in my neighborhood, you know, for
Speaker 1: the not said album was great and to go hang
Speaker 1: out afterwards. I'm seeing people they got new names. I
Speaker 1: still call them their old name, and they got they
Speaker 1: got new names and stuff. You know, I remember when
Speaker 1: they were kids, but their name now is knockout, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, or something like that. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, most of the guys, I know their moms,
Speaker 1: I know their dads me and they their parents are
Speaker 1: still cool. Y'all can smoke a blunt with their kid
Speaker 1: who's now grown up and and and then to go
Speaker 1: have a drink with their dad, you know, two steps
Speaker 1: away in the whole same neighborhood. So and everybody's you know,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing people that are doing well for themselves, man.
Speaker 1: And that's the best, you know, because I mean people
Speaker 1: look at me like, um, probably like yo, he got
Speaker 1: out of here, but still comes back. You know. I
Speaker 1: have I have different things we do there. Summer camp.
Speaker 1: I do out there and take the kids out and
Speaker 1: other things cool. In the early days, lyrically, you talked
Speaker 1: a lot about what was going on around you in
Speaker 1: the hood and how as your life has developed and
Speaker 1: as you've changed your living conditions, how do you find
Speaker 1: what to write about? Like where does the content come
Speaker 1: from of what you talk about? I knew years ago
Speaker 1: that you know, moving away or wherever I was at,
Speaker 1: I had enough to write books. I had enough to write.
Speaker 1: I could have left the neighborhood fourteen and still had
Speaker 1: enough stuff because I had already been fed through what
Speaker 1: I saw at fourteen and what I learned in school,
Speaker 1: and what I read at home, and what I would
Speaker 1: love to watch on television, all of these things I'm
Speaker 1: watching growing up in New York. It gave me a
Speaker 1: piece of everything. So I wanted to write screenplays when
Speaker 1: I was young, So I was I was writing screenplays
Speaker 1: or trying to preteen just about you know. So I
Speaker 1: was already kind of like a writer. That was my
Speaker 1: little hobby that nobody knew about. So I knew that
Speaker 1: I'd be able to do it. So it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: where I'm at, where I live, you know. Although Wyoming
Speaker 1: was a was was kind of tough for me. It
Speaker 1: was a great getaway to work on an I say,
Speaker 1: an album, but that was I wasn't prepared like to
Speaker 1: for that. But I still got it done. But I
Speaker 1: could do it anywhere. It's really a different world. Like
Speaker 1: growing up in New York and going to Wyoming. It's
Speaker 1: like it's different, right right. Definitely. Do songs ever come
Speaker 1: based on a concept first? Or is it usually based
Speaker 1: on lines? I like, I like when when there's a
Speaker 1: concept before I even get started, because I get the
Speaker 1: concept and then I'm like, I'm eager to get it done.
Speaker 1: I'm like, when am I gonna go? When am I
Speaker 1: going to go in the studio? I can't wait to
Speaker 1: do this. I can't wait to get in there and
Speaker 1: do this song. I write notes down on my phone,
Speaker 1: so when I'm in the studio, I could just look
Speaker 1: at my notes and kind of just close my eyes
Speaker 1: and just say it. And that's how a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff comes up. Now I hear the music, and as
Speaker 1: soon as I hear it, I just start I start
Speaker 1: saying the first things that cut in my head. I
Speaker 1: don't write it down, it's just because it's too quick,
Speaker 1: So you just say it, you know, I've been doing
Speaker 1: it so long. You just say it, and that's how
Speaker 1: it comes together for me now, So it sounds almost
Speaker 1: like you write it automatically. The track comes on. You
Speaker 1: just freestyle essentially, and then do you go back and refine?
Speaker 1: I go back and refine. Sometimes it's not good. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I have to go back and write it. A lot
Speaker 1: of times, thank you. A lot of times though it's
Speaker 1: good because you know, if you're in a good mood
Speaker 1: or whatever the mood you are in, your energies up
Speaker 1: and you want to lay down some stuff, or if
Speaker 1: you're in a melancholy type of mood, you might write
Speaker 1: something that's not the most hyper flow, but it still
Speaker 1: gives you. You put your spirit on it and you
Speaker 1: say what you need to say. Is there ever a
Speaker 1: concept that goes through a whole album or is it
Speaker 1: usually more song based. I've done some concept albums, like
Speaker 1: the untitled album, the recent album King's Disease. It was
Speaker 1: just basically like, you know, I'm conscious now of all
Speaker 1: the things that we can do to hurt ourselves with
Speaker 1: too much, with being excessive, with if you're gonna have,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna eat bad. It's all in moderation. You
Speaker 1: gotta watch what works for you and what doesn't work
Speaker 1: for you. So, you know, not just the health thing,
Speaker 1: you know, being it's all about you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of us feel like we're kings. A lot of us
Speaker 1: ain't kings. A lot of us. Just because you're a man,
Speaker 1: don't make you a king, you know, I think king
Speaker 1: is uh. There's been some terrible kings and recorded history also,
Speaker 1: but um, you know you have to like in my
Speaker 1: from my perspective, you got to be a good guy,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's like taking care of yourself and
Speaker 1: those around you. How do you think you learned that? Because,
Speaker 1: as you said, there are some bad kings. Like how
Speaker 1: did you learn to be cool? That's a good one there, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I think I think I learned a lot coming up.
Speaker 1: I think people places and in situations just watching other people,
Speaker 1: watching it, life experiences where I saw myself doing things
Speaker 1: that wasn't right corny, you know, coming up, and I'm
Speaker 1: like mad at myself. Later, like you knows, I'm a
Speaker 1: team and I'm learning and I think I know it all.
Speaker 1: And you know, my mom used to tell me things
Speaker 1: and later I'm like she was right, Damn. I still
Speaker 1: say it to this day, to her life. She's not here,
Speaker 1: but I'm like she was right about this, and that
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have trusted this. I shouldn't have did this,
Speaker 1: I should have did that. But just just being grateful
Speaker 1: that I'm here, like you know, to alive, to to
Speaker 1: to being one of those guys, to come from where
Speaker 1: I come from and to be here. Um, I see
Speaker 1: which people, I see which people made mistakes. I see
Speaker 1: which people made mistakes, but it wasn't their fault, but
Speaker 1: their heart resented. So I still it's still honorable what
Speaker 1: they did. I start weighing things out and trying to
Speaker 1: see what did I want for me and what did
Speaker 1: I want to give back? And I always wanted to
Speaker 1: be somebody that could help somebody here, helps mighty there,
Speaker 1: and and just just because I want to see them
Speaker 1: reach their full potential, because I think that's what we're
Speaker 1: supposed to do. So that's the most important thing. That
Speaker 1: was it for me? Beautiful? How has your relationship to
Speaker 1: hip hop music changed from being a kid to now?
Speaker 1: I don't keep up. I can't keep up with the
Speaker 1: music today like I could back then. Back then, everything
Speaker 1: that came out was exciting, even the wax stuff. I
Speaker 1: would buy wax stuff sometimes and just stare at the
Speaker 1: albums and what label they were on and who produced this,
Speaker 1: and I would just want to understand it all. Now, Nah,
Speaker 1: I'm like nah. Sometimes now the things still hit you
Speaker 1: with that are like whoa, this is great? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And most of the times I don't know who made
Speaker 1: those records, you know. I'm you know, when when the
Speaker 1: world was more normal, I was outside, I was at clubs,
Speaker 1: i was at parties, I was around, and I'm hearing
Speaker 1: songs that normally I wouldn't know just being in my
Speaker 1: regular life. You know, it was just it was the songs.
Speaker 1: I go, what is that? And I would forget to
Speaker 1: hit shazam, you know. So there's all kinds of songs
Speaker 1: you know that that hit me. I'm like, who is
Speaker 1: that guy? Like that guy? And as I'm starting to
Speaker 1: get into this guy, there's a whole new movement happening.
Speaker 1: And as I'm getting into this whole new movement, three
Speaker 1: more just started, so I figured I'll catch up to
Speaker 1: it when I get a chance. Yeah, it's an exciting
Speaker 1: time when there's so much new stuff. What were you
Speaker 1: thinking working on? It's Yours with Tila Rock. I think
Speaker 1: the main purpose of it was the feeling of the club,
Speaker 1: like what DJs were doing and drum machines and sort
Speaker 1: of the feeling of the hip hop club, which I
Speaker 1: relate to what you experienced at the park. It probably
Speaker 1: very similar, but the records that were coming out at
Speaker 1: that time didn't sound like that at all. So It's
Speaker 1: Yours was really just like it was almost like a
Speaker 1: documentary of what the club really felt like, right versus
Speaker 1: the records made by professionals who didn't really know what
Speaker 1: happened in the club. That was totally the sound and
Speaker 1: Tea Rocks rom schemes was crazy. What I always wanted
Speaker 1: an eight O eight rolland eight OW eight or nine
Speaker 1: O nine? Which one did you use on that? That
Speaker 1: was an eight o eight. That nine O nine is
Speaker 1: a little more like um, more like euro dancy. It's
Speaker 1: it's like a tighter sound was the eight o eight.
Speaker 1: It's more booming. And you were planning on doing a
Speaker 1: whole Tila Rock album or you don't know, probably, I
Speaker 1: mean it was so early in those days. Really all
Speaker 1: there were were singles. Hardly anyone had albums, so all
Speaker 1: there really were were twelve inches, and I remember Russell said,
Speaker 1: you know, I think this is going to be you know,
Speaker 1: albums is where it's hot, and I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that albums. You know, I grew up buying albums
Speaker 1: because I liked rock music. But it almost felt like
Speaker 1: what made hip hop hip hop at that time were
Speaker 1: twelve inches, you know, twelve inch singles, right, So I
Speaker 1: just thought it was a twelve inch single world. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking so much about albums at that time, right.
Speaker 1: So with with Walk This Way, so you knew that
Speaker 1: at this point, Run DMC had become the biggest instantly
Speaker 1: the biggest rap group in the world. Um, there's still
Speaker 1: to me, the biggest best rap group that ever happened
Speaker 1: to hip hop. Um, you knew that with Arrowsmith that
Speaker 1: they had went as high as they could go, and
Speaker 1: Run DMC and raps high they can go, and they
Speaker 1: needed to merge or what. Nothing like that. Nothing like that.
Speaker 1: It was we'd pretty much finished the album without Walk
Speaker 1: This Way on it. And I remember I was at
Speaker 1: a dinner in California with a guy from a big
Speaker 1: record company who was like trying to convince us to
Speaker 1: come work with their record company, and he said, how
Speaker 1: can you explain the success of this music? How can
Speaker 1: you explain the success of rap? It's not even music,
Speaker 1: Like this isn't music. And I started thinking, it's like
Speaker 1: this guy's being nice to me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: He's he's he's trying to invite me in, and he's
Speaker 1: telling me hip hop isn't music as far as he
Speaker 1: can hear. So I see that there's this big disconnect
Speaker 1: between the people who are who feel hip hop and
Speaker 1: the people who don't understand it at all. And I
Speaker 1: was looking for something to bridge that gap. And because
Speaker 1: I started thinking about there there are these records that
Speaker 1: are not so far off, like you you mentioned one
Speaker 1: or earlier, you mentioned a record earlier that you're like, well,
Speaker 1: this is sort of a precursor to hip hop records,
Speaker 1: and like you could see, it's like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: like the roots of hip hop in this. So I
Speaker 1: just started thinking about records that were like rap, like
Speaker 1: vocals that somebody who didn't understand rap music would understand.
Speaker 1: And the first song that I thought of was Walk
Speaker 1: This Way, because like the verses of Walk this Way
Speaker 1: are essentially rhyme scheme versus but people know it as
Speaker 1: a rock song, So it was more as a bridging
Speaker 1: that gap so that people could see, Oh, this isn't
Speaker 1: I thought it was more different than it is. It's
Speaker 1: like this is something that's always been part of the language.
Speaker 1: It's just a part of the language. It made it
Speaker 1: like rock and rap are the same. They are the same, yes,
Speaker 1: and and they and their roots are really similar. It's
Speaker 1: like it's not so far different, right right, So that
Speaker 1: was that was the purpose of it. It really was
Speaker 1: just to like, and how howd the person not said
Speaker 1: that to me? I wouldn't have felt like there was
Speaker 1: this mission, you know, I had this mission of like,
Speaker 1: people are missing what this is. There has to be
Speaker 1: a way to explain what it is. Just musically you
Speaker 1: did that. He did that. Thank you for that. My pleasure, man,
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure. Same love. Speak to you soon,
Speaker 1: sir Love. Thanks to NAS for taking Rick back to
Speaker 1: the Queen's Bridge of the eighties and nineties and reminiscing
Speaker 1: about the early days of himp hop. You can hear
Speaker 1: all of your favorite NAS songs on the playlist at
Speaker 1: Broken record podcast dot com. To be sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken
Speaker 1: Record podcast where you can find extendicuts of news one
Speaker 1: all of the episodes. Broken Record is produced with helpful
Speaker 1: Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and our
Speaker 1: intern Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffee and
Speaker 1: it's executive produced by Mia Lobell. Broken Record is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries and if you like Broken Record,
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review our show on
Speaker 1: your podcast. At a theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm
Speaker 1: justin Richmond bass