Nas: "I'm Not Going To Save All People With an Album"

Nas' chart-topping album Untitled contains some of his strongest most intense work in years. Ironically, the rapper says he made most of it in a fairly casual manner. "I'm a perfectionist, but I wing it at the same time," he told Rolling Stone's Evan Serpick. "Some people would piss me off with ignorant statements, and I guess I paid attention to a statement or two that I shouldn't have. It made me think too hard on this shit, and I didn't want to make that kind of record. So I waited until I could record when I was not thinking. I didn't want the record to sound like I thought too hard. So every time I was thinking too hard on it, I'd just go home." The man born Nasir Jones also told RS that he hopes that despite his success as a recording artist, his goals remain modest. "A lot of times parents are just trying to live day by day, and sometimes those kids come out of that household with the extra drive to be better than what their parents are. And in a lot of cases they don't see the need to work hard at all. But it's all good that there's that balance. I'm not even gonna act like I can save all black people, all white people, all poor people with an album, with a movie, with a book. But if I can contribute to helping one person out through my experiences then that's everything to me."

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Song Stories

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz | 2008

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."

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