Nas has given fans an update on his eagerly anticipated joint album with DJ Premier — which he says has been “a long time coming” for him and the legendary producer.
The Queensbridge native briefly discussed the project in an interview with Rolling Stone, revealing that it will include a handful of older songs that he and Premo recorded when they first made plans to make an album together.
“I’m going to say at least two of those ideas happened on this album,” he said. “We didn’t get a chance to do ’em when we were talking about ’em, but we finally got a chance to put those recordings together this year.”
Though he didn’t share a concrete release date, Nas did express his excitement and enthusiasm for the album, saying: “I can’t wait for people to finally hear it. I don’t know about anybody else, but for me and him, it was personally a long time coming for us to do it.”
The as-yet-untitled album, which has so far spawned one single in “Define My Name,” is the crown jewel in Mass Appeal Records’ Legend Has It…, a year-long series of releases from some of New York hip-hop’s most iconic names.
The celebrations began this past June with the arrival of Slick Rick‘s Victory — The Ruler’s first album in over 25 years — which was soon followed by well-received projects from Raekwon (The Emperor’s New Clothes) and Ghostface Killah (Supreme Clientele 2).
Next up is Mobb Deep‘s Infinite, the duo’s first album since the tragic death of Prodigy in 2017, which is set to drop this Friday (October 10). Big L‘s posthumous LP Harlem’s Finest: Return of the King is due out on October 31, while a new De La Soul record is also on the horizon (hopefully before the end of the year).
“It’s 1995 all over again,” Nas told Rolling Stone of the star-studded series. “Sometimes I feel like 2025 has that feeling. It’s not going backwards, [it’s] going forward, though. It’s that feeling of urgency, that vibration, the celebration of life and these songs and these albums, what they meant 30 years ago.”
He added: “It’s a celebration of a great impact, a standard that they set that we could never forget because it keeps us aiming higher. This series is to encourage [and] inspire hip-hop and remind us all [of] the pureness of hip-hop. I hope that we all can do this together.”
