Remaining relevant in hip-hop is arguably tougher to do than in any other music genre/culture, but Queensbridge-bred rhymer Nas makes it look easy. When he made his debut on Main Source’s “Live At the BBQ” in ’92, potent lines like, “When I was twelve I went to hell for snuffin’ Jesus,” quickly made Nas an MC you purposely sought out. Like many hip-hoppers in ’94, I remember listening to his debut, Illmatic, on repeat that summer in awe. On top of the first-class productions from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Large Professor heard on this classic, Nas’ vivid street narratives and raw metaphors unfolded like moving, gritty cinema that you just refuse to stop watching.

Nine albums later and the New Yorker is still one of the most talked about MCs in the game because he takes hip-hop where other rappers are scared to. Nas has never been one to shy away from touchy subjects and perhaps his unyielding approach to making music is partially why people to still check for him. But gaining attention by naming his recent albums Hip Hop Is Dead and N*gger (later instead left untitled) aren’t flashy gimmicks—they’re part of his creative vision that just happen to spark dialogue. “People ask me about controversial titles and stuff like that and if it just happens to be controversial because it just is, then so be it,” he tells me. “But there is no plan to make controversy. It’s just however it comes.” Keeping his career true to his free-flowing sonic path, it doesn’t surprise me when Nas says that he can’t remember how and why his upcoming collaboration with Damien Marley (Distant Relatives) was born. The one thing he knows is that the album with the Jamaican star was meant to be. And in the case of working with Red Bull Big Tune champion C-Sick, who is only 18 like he was as a rookie, it’s also hard to deny the fateful factor of this connection. To discover more about Nas’ current work, check out www.iamnas.com Words by Max Herman, photo by Robert Downs/Red Bull Photofiles