Nas has said that he doesn’t get ideas from other rappers his age anymore.
On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday, February 22, the 49-year-old rap veteran was a special guest and was questioned about the musicians who keep him on his toes.
Nasty Nas has said that his fellow Hip Hop veterans don’t inspire him because many of them are no longer making music.
Nas said, “I’m really trying to figure out what to do next, and I feel like a lot of Hip Hop artists my age don’t put out a lot of music, so I can’t use them as a model.”
“They kind of slowed down, and I know that’s hard for whatever reason, but I got bit by the bug, man.”
Many MCs from his generation has slowed down or stopped making music, but Nas has given his already legendary career a boost in recent years by working with Hit-Boy on four projects in three years. One of these projects won Esco his first Grammy Award.
“I worked with this guy Hit-Boy, who is like the best. He produced all of those albums, King’s Disease 1, 2, and 3. At this point, we’re kind of giving ourselves ideas. It’s a great story.”
Nas joked when Colbert asked him what he sees in Hit-Boy that he doesn’t see in himself. He also said that he and the multi-platinum producer were “perfect for each other.”
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Last year’s King’s Disease 3, which didn’t have any extra features, was another example of how strong this duo is.
Hit-Boy told Apple Music in an interview that he had a lot of different artists in mind for the album. He even tried out some guest vocals he had on hand, but in the end, he and Nas didn’t think they were as good as what they were making as a two-man team.
“Honestly, it was when we got further into making the album and I started to think and plan about who could be on it,” he said. “I even used some features from different artists that I had on my computer. We tried some things, but nothing really fit with what we were doing on our own. I think this is Nas’s first album that doesn’t have any other artists on it. That’s a bad thing in and of itself.”
King’s Disease 3 debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard 200. It sold 29,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, giving Nas his 16th top 10 albums on the chart, tying him with his former rival JAY-Z.
Even though neither Nas nor Hit-Boy has said for sure that there will be another one, Billboard recently said that the two are working on King’s Disease 4, which will feature 50 Cent.
It would be their first time working together in over 20 years after Nas made two appearances on 50’s mixtape Guess Who’s Back in 2002.