Nas
- Byname of:
- Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones
- Also called:
- Nasty Nas
- Also Known As:
- Nasty Nas
- Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones
- Nasir Jones
Nas (born September 14, 1973, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) is an American rapper and songwriter who became a dominant voice in 1990s East Coast hip-hop. Nas built a reputation as an expressive chronicler of inner-city street life.
Nasir Jones, the son of a jazz musician, grew up in public housing in Queens, New York. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade and searched for a creative outlet, finally settling on hip-hop. His breakthrough came in 1992, when his song “Half Time” (credited to Nasty Nas) appeared on the soundtrack to the film Zebrahead. Columbia Records soon signed him to a contract. His debut recording as Nas, Illmatic (1994), drew widespread acclaim for its poetic narration of hard-edged inner-city life.
The more pop-oriented approach of It Was Written (1996) helped that album reach an even wider audience than its predecessor but ignited a recurring tension in Nas’s career between the appetite of the pop audience and the demands of hip-hop purists. He maintained his commercial appeal with I Am… (1999), although by that time he had also become embroiled in a public feud with fellow rapper Jay-Z over which of the two was the preeminent voice in East Coast hip-hop. The schism inspired Stillmatic (2001), which many fans considered a return to form, and was referred to on the more personal God’s Son (2002), which was also a response to the death of Nas’s mother. The two rappers publicly settled their differences in 2005, and shortly thereafter Nas signed with Def Jam, of which Jay-Z was president at the time.
Nas’s penchant for provocation marked Hip Hop Is Dead (2006) and an untitled follow-up (2008), while Life Is Good (2012) struck an introspective tone. He also notably collaborated with reggae musician Damian Marley (the youngest son of Bob Marley) on the album Distant Relatives (2010). Nasir (2018), produced by Kanye West, was regarded by many reviewers as disappointing, not least because it failed to address allegations of abuse from his former (2005–10) wife, singer Kelis. However, King’s Disease (2020), which was produced by Hit-Boy, showed none of the defects that critics perceived in the previous release and won near-universal praise.
Nas also made occasional film appearances, notably in Belly (1998), a crime drama in which he starred opposite rapper DMX, and Black Nativity (2013), an adaptation of Langston Hughes’s gospel play. In 2018 he appeared in the independent film Monster, based on an acclaimed novel by Walter Dean Myers.