In a sit-down with Desus and Mero on their hiatus-ending episode on Sunday, Nas spoke on his latest project King’s Disease II as well as a few special moments he shared with the late DMX.
“That was a great time man,” Nas said of his time working alongside the “Party Up” MC on the 1998 film Belly, which the Bodega Boys have shouted out countless times. “’Cause to come from music and go to Times Square to the premiere and see our names on the marquee—you know, growing up in New York, Times Square, 42nd Street was like the truth. Today it’s Disney World, but back then it was crazy. So to see my name there, that was like, ‘Aight I could quit doing everything now. I did it all.’”
Nas added that he formed a “brotherhood” with DMX during their time together on Belly. “I didn’t have to see him, I didn’t have to call him, he didn’t have to call me,” Nas said. “When we saw each other though, it was...beyond. Even working on the film man, we cried, man. We was at the tunnel outside doing a scene and I was like, ‘You feel that bro? You know what’s happening?’ And he was like ‘yeah,’ and he started talking to me and he started crying, and then I’m crying.”
Nasir finished up by saying DMX’s overall presence was unlike anything the Illmatic creator had seen before. “This man, his energy is something else man, and people need to understand DMX had more love than most rappers will ever see. People said that when he passed, ‘Where was the love when he was alive?’ You gotta be kidding me. He had more love than probably 98 percent of rappers will ever have.”
Nas and his King’s Disease II collaborator Hit-Boy recently delivered an installment of MasterClass, where the duo broke down how to make a hip-hop song, and how to communicate storytelling through rap. In an interview with Complex, Nas spoke more on his approach to the class and how he broke it all down.
“It’s all about giving you what you need in chapters, increments, and giving you the vibe,” he told us. “It’s sort of hard to break it down, so those different classes and different steps make the most sense to me. That’s how I would like to receive it from an artist, so I thought that that’s the way for the person that’s watching it to give them the time to soak it in, each one piece-by-piece. I break it down piece-by-piece, and each piece is different. Each piece gives you more of my life. A lot of it is about my life journey.”
Check out the full Desus & Mero interview up top.
