Nasty Nas: Hip Hip Family Values

[DudeAsInCool]

Hip-Hop Family Values

By ALEX ABRAMOVICH

Published: December 5, 2004

NASIR JONES, the 31-year-old rapper who is better known as Nasty Nas, Nas Escobar, Nastradamus or, more simply, Nas, released his first album, "Illmatic," in 1994. A densely textured, deeply lyrical portrait of life in Long Island City's Queensbridge projects, the record signaled the resurgence of the moribund New York hip-hop scene and helped pave the way for Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z and a new generation of New York rappers. The music press called it a hip-hop masterpiece; The Village Voice called Nas "one of the most important writers of the 20th century."

Its no surprise, then, that the appearance of Nas's eighth, and most ambitious, studio album - the two-CD "Street's Disciple," which was released Tuesday - has occasioned cover stories in leading hip-hop magazines. More surprising is the amount of space magazines like The Source and The Ave have devoted to a figure who doesn't fit the archetypal hip-hop narrative: the rapper's father. But if Nas is no ordinary M.C., his father, the Harlem-based singer, cornetist and bandleader Olu Dara, is no run-of-the mill dad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/arts/music/05abra.html