Nas Doesn't See Any Brave Emcees

The rapper sits down with Michael Eric Dyson at Georgetown University to talk about the state and politics of Hip Hop. 

Georgetown Sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson and Nas visited the school’s Gaton Hall for a more than hour-long conversation with James Peterson, director of Africana studies at Lehigh University. Sitting down in front of a live audience the night before Nas’ anniversary performance of Illmatic at the Kennedy Center, the pair discussed the state of Hip Hop and the culture’s recent spike in academia. 

Remembering their first meeting, Nas recounted being surprised that Dyson, who has written several academic books on various topics within Hip Hop, knew his lyrics by heart. “We met and I didn’t know he would know my stuff and since then we just clicked,” he said. 

“He’s had my back. I had his. He’s like one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. "There’s not a lot of people from your generation that really educated people, that have a voice out there, who really can identify with us and you,” Nas added in reference to the largely student-filled audience. “He’s our guy. We been tight for years.” Asked about his view on the current state of Hip Hop, Nas explained pride in seeing musicians like 9th Wonder and himself engaging academically at institutions like Harvard. 

“It’s so many layers to that question, where is Hip Hop?” he said. “You talk about 9th Wonder at Harvard, I recently been over there and met with Skip Gates and Dr. Morgan and just watching where Hip Hop is today. Myself, re-releasing an album from 20 years ago is like, '20 years? That’s crazy.'” Later in the interview, Nas described the difficulty in balancing socially conscious subject matter in music without coming off as preachy. 

“I don’t see enough emcees who are brave enough to be honest,” he said. “I would like to see more of that. There’s a lot of good stuff. There’s a lot of bad in Rap. The socially conscious stuff can come off sometime as preachy, so a lot of people tend to stay away from it. That ain’t their bag. That’s not what they do. But still, they kind of have some artistic responsibility to do more than what’s the latest trend...I would like to see people remember it’s an artform because the better we all become we push each other to make the whole artform better. Then we won’t have to worry about who won the Grammy.”