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And Finally Artist News
Nas missed out on recording with Notorious BIG because he was “too high”
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 27 August 2020
Why did Nas never record with Notorious BIG? The answer is simple. Despite arriving at the studio to record verses on a couple of tracks for Biggie’s debut album ‘Ready To Die’, Nas says he simply got “too high” to actually perform anything on tape.
“I got too high”, Nas tells Power 105.1’s ‘The Breakfast Club’ show. “I was in the studio and Big was rolling up some of that chocolate from Brooklyn and he didn’t warn me. You know, I was zonked out, yo”.
Among the tracks he was supposed to rap on while in the studio that day was ‘Gimme The Loot’, one of the album’s more controversial tracks, on which Biggie ended up rapping both sides of a conversation between two thieves.
The obvious question, of course, is why didn’t Nas just come back the next day and try again? “Still high”, he says. “I’m not messing with Big and… man, that smoke. We were smokers, man. [I] still am. I don’t know, things happened. I lived far out in Long Island at the time. Coming to the city was like a mission. It was just hard to get me to move, man”.
Of course, both rappers were young at the time and didn’t have the benefit of hindsight to know just how significant that album would become. On the plus side, Nas wasn’t too high to record his own debut album, ‘Illmatic’, which came out the same year as ‘Ready To Die’.
Nas is also still with us and recording new music. Last week he put out new single ‘Ultra Black’. Watch the video here:
