“When was the last time you heard your boy Nas rhyme? Never on schedule but always on time.”

Memory Lane, 1994 [youtube link]

My intellect prevails from a hanging cross with nails
I reinforce the frail, with lyrics that’s real
Word to Christ, a disciple of streets, trifle on beats
I decifer prophecies through a mic and say peace.

Not Going Back ft. Kelis 2006 [youtube link]

First thing that happen when you make a little paper
You think the Marriot is living in a skyscraper
Till you come across some ever more flyer paper…
The way I flaunted it then would now embarrass me
It kinda make me wanna hate bling, it’s a race thing
How they sell blacks the bootleg shit, in fact
Real millionaires spend 60 mill on paintings

Suicide Bounce ft. Busta Rhymes 2004 [youtube link]

Told you, y’all sloppy gangsters
Saying “Nas is this and Nas is that”
Your eyes go front, your eyes go back…
The fact is y’all don’t really want it,
Two to the head, four to the stomach
Call more security cause I cometh!

Last Real Nigga Alive pt. 2 2010

Hands of luck, more hits than Gamble and Huff
Or Holland and Dozier, 40 belows cover the toes
I was a soldier, with the pop eye sipping the Malta
Nigga honestly, I call this a culture
My sister’s a snake, my brother’s a vulture
My mother’s the block, my father’s a ghetto piranha
Swimming with sharks, my tone’s falsetto drama
Obama, if the kids mirror you,
We’ll all push Maseratis with the silver hue…
I feel alive, new Porsches, Jordan number 5s
Already said I’m the last real nigga alive.

Credit in the Straight World (demo)

She Walks On Me (demo)

March 25th, 1993: mp3 zip — FLAC zip
She Walks On Me; The Void; Olympia; Softer, Softest (2 takes)

March 27, 1993 mp3 zip — FLAC zip
Credit in the Straight World; Gutless; Old Age; Doll Parts

Previously: ‘Gutless, You’re Gutless!’

‘Drive Slow’ with Southern rappers Paul Wall and G.L.C. (with T.I. later added onto a remix) exemplifies the creativity of Kanye’s contributions to the genre: although he avoids his early signature soul-sample sound, it’s still a throwback; nostalgic jazzy sounds and creative drums smoothly incorporating the Southern bling aesthetic with old-fashioned storytelling: ‘Drive slow, homie.’

[youtube link]

GLC: If you ridin’ around the city with nowhere to go
Kanye: Drive slow, homie
GLC: Live today, cause tomorrow man, you never know
Kanye: You need to pump your brakes and drive slow, homie

T.I.: Looking at life through my rearview, all the problems I had
Could be seen a lot clearer after time had passed
Known for living so fast, they wonder how he don’t crash
With 220 on the dash, he constantly mashing…

So nowadays, they can call me old fashioned
But it’s way too much cash to see blue lights flashing
So I guess the moral of this here, class is:
Life about who make it, not about who make it the fastest.

Kanye + T.I.: Drive slow, homie.

Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin, to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose, and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?

Who taught you to hate your own kind—who taught you to hate the race that you belong to, so much so that you don’t wanna be around each other? No, before you come around asking Mr. Muhammed does he teach hate, you should ask yourself: who taught you to hate being what God gave you?

“If there was an old days, we pioneered it.”
— Nas

The lyrical quality of 90s hip hop is astounding in comparison to rap these days; even average MCs were technically proficient, and new kids like Nas came through blazing: “I move swift and uplift your mind, shoot the gift when I riff in rhyme”.

Nas, Live at the BBQ (1991)

Street’s disciple, my raps are trifle
I shoot slugs from my brain just like a rifle
Stampede the stage, I leave the microphone split
Play Mr. Tuffy while I’m on some Pretty Tone shit

Verbal assassin, my architect pleases
When I was twelve, I went to hell for snuffing Jesus!
Nasty Nas is a rebel to America
Police murderer, I’m causing hysteria

My troops roll up with a strange force
I was trapped in a cage and let out by the Main Source
Swimming in women like a lifeguard
Put on a bulletproof nigga I strike hard

Kidnap the President’s wife without a plan
And hanging niggas like the Ku Klux Klan
I melt mics till the soundwave’s over
Before stepping to me you’d rather step to Jehovah

Slamming MCs on cement
Cause verbally, I’m iller than a AIDS patient
I move swift and uplift your mind
Shoot the gift when I riff in rhyme

Rapping sniper, speaking real words
My thoughts react, like Steven Spielberg’s
Poetry attacks, paragraphs punch hard
My brain is insane, I’m out to lunch God

Science is dropped, my raps are toxic
My voicebox locks and excels like a rocket!

Nas:
“You got some songs, brother that’s violent, without being violent. Without cursing, but you get your point across, you make people stand at attention. There’s times I hear something that Common does that I’m like, ‘I wish I made that song.’ He got a way to approach certain records, like…”
Audience member:
“‘Get Em High!”
Nas:
“Yeah! Get Em High, you know it’s crazy, it’s too many to name actually.”

— 52nd Grammy Weekend

Get Em High (Kanye West ft. Talib Kweli & Common, 2004):

Get ‘em high like noon or the moon,
Or room filled with smoke, a hype filled with dope
Y’all assumed I was doomed, out of tune,
But I still fill the notes with real nigga quotes

Real rappers is hard to find like a remote,
Control rappers out of, used to but still got love,
That’s why I abuse you who are not thugs

Rock clubs like Tiger Woods in the hood,
Should have my own reality show called Soul Survivor
I stole on liver niggas than you,
You’s a bitch, I got ones that are thicker than you

How could I ever let your words affect me,
They say hip hop is dead, I’m here to resurrect me,
Marks is too sexy to even make songs like these
That’s why the raw don’t know your name, like Alicia Keys

To many featured MCs and producers is populer
Twelve thousand spins, nobody got to copping the album,
How come? You the hot garbage of the year,
It’s clear your image is snooped up

Label got you souped up, telling you you sick,
When you a dick with a loose nut
Video hard to watch like Medusa
Even your club record need a booster
Chimped up, with a pimp cup, illiterate nigga!

Read the info/infra-red across your head I’m bread/bred king like Simba
Bo(u)lder then Denver, I ain’t a Madd Rapper just a emcee with a temper
You dancing for money like Honey, I did this my way
So when the industry crash, I survive like Kanye

Spitting through wires and fires, MCs retiring
Got yo hands up? Get them motherfuckers higher then!

“Put the CD on your tongue: yeah, that’s pure man.”
— Kanye West

Nas’ verse on ‘Verbal Intercourse’ is one of the greatest in hip hop history:

Through the lights cameras and action, glamour glitters and gold
I unfold the scroll, plant seeds to stampede the globe
When I’m deceased, by then the beast arise like yeast
To conquer peace, leaving savages to roam in the streets

Live on the run, police paying me to give in my gun
Trick my wisdom with the system that imprisoned my son
Smoke a gold leaf I hold heat, nonchalantly
I’m grungy, but things I do is real it never haunts me

It’s like a cycle, niggas come home, some’ll go in
Do a bullet, come back, do the same shit again
From the womb to the tomb, presume the unpredictable
Guns salute life, rapidly, that’s the ritual.

He first recorded this on a demo track called ‘Deja Vu’, a clear version of which was recently unearthed. It continues:

They telling you your state of mind, like you worthless
So he curses, his moms saying bible verses, that’s all she works with
But miracles never leave the churches,
Instead it hits the pockets of the preacher just to purchase
A house with a swimming pool, labels me a sinning fool,
I’m just a nigga who inherited a winning jewel…

Zip of ‘Deja Vu’ (9 mb). [source]

My girls wear lipstick while they’re making my beats,
They got guitar picks in their purses, Louboutins on their feet
They got no time for waiting in lines,
They got sex and 808s running through their dirty minds…