Q&A: Nas

On "Hero" you talk about kids looking for inspiration. Who were your childhood heroes?
James Brown, Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, Mr. T.

Do you feel like kids today look up to the wrong people?
Look up to whoever. You could look to that guy that protected the neighborhood who never finished school. There's qualities in him that you can be inspired by. You don't have to be attached to one way of looking at life. I see opportunity everywhere.

What in your childhood made you able to see that?
I think it was my mom. She was always tellin' me, "Hold your head up, you're better than that." Me and my brother were on the street; that was hard on her, but she held us down, and I saw her strength. That strength is in me.

Your dad is a jazz musician. How did he influence you?
He was a man who controlled his life. Other kids didn't have fathers like that. Either their father wasn't around or they were in jail — they weren't musicians who traveled the world and came back with stories. I grew up with my pops the jazzman. He'd be in the house smokin' weed. He gave me weed when I was, like, nine years old. That was cool.

What did you and your dad do when you got high together?
Listen to music, talk, watch TV. I'd bug him for a hit, and on a few occasions he let me hit it.

At the end of the day, why did you end up changing the title?
It started to get the wrong attention, like from radio hosts who don't know what the fuck is going on. I'm not talking to them. I'm talking to the hip-hop family.

And those people know what it's called.
They know what it's called. It's the Nigger Album.

[From Issue 1056-1057 — July 10, 2008]