Yep, Nas Probably Used Ghostwriters On "Untitled"

Remember that horrible feeling you got when you first found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real?

That was the same pain thousands (millions, maybe?) of hip-hop fans endured the other day when news came out that Nas, one of hip-hop’s most celebrated lyricists, didn’t pen most of the lyrics for his last album, the militant-sounding Untitled LP.

Christmas has been ruined.

If you were in some kind of slumber, here is the obligatory summarization of what happened:

1) Veteran writer dream hampton, who has penned work for every publication from The Source (when it was still “The Bible”) to The Village Voice, said while answering a question about Jay-Z making an album like Untitled, that Jay-Z writes what he feels and that stic.man, one half of dead prez, and Jay Electronica, largely wrote Nas’ controversial Untitled album, which, if you remember, was supposed to be called Nigger before politics and Wal-Mart got involved.

2. Frank William Miller Junior, a former Hot97 employ, backs up dream in this blog post.

3. The Internet says WTF and forever halts dream's original conversation (about the role hip-hop should play in helping the people, or something like that).

4. Nas fans attack.

5. Jay Electronica and stic.man both deny the claims, without really denying the claims. 

6. Nas fans attack.

7. dream stands her ground.

8. Nas fans attack.

(This whole thing makes me realize how passionate Nas fans are. Where the f*ck were ya’lI at when I try to argue Nas >> Jay-Z or that Nastradamus is a good album?)Essentially, what we have here, if you cancel out all of the noise from Nas Stans, is a bunch of voices yelling. I trust one voice the most, and that would be the most credible one, which is dream hampton.    

Here's an interesting interaction that occurred between stic.man and dream hampton yesterday:

For me, the most damning stuff is when dream says: “I heard whole bars you’d written and performed…verbatim by Nas.” A statement like that, coming from a women who has sent 20-plus years building her reputation as a credible person, shouldn’t be discarded. Something like this could tarnish a legacy, forever. Why would she risk it?

I can ignore what stic.man and Jay Electronica are saying because, if they are ghostwriters, they are just doing their proper ghostwriting duties of shutting the f*ck up.

The truth is, if they say something about pening Nas verses, there might be legal implications, and the same goes if dream hampton is found lying.

She’s not lying. (And miss me with that she's a Jay-Z-Stan sh*t. Child please, grow up.)

My only gripe with dream: you can't just throw out this nugget, and casually say whatever, just because. We need facts: What songs? Were they entire songs? Etc. I think she’s past the point of ignoring this now.  

As for what happens to Nas if it’s true … nothing, really. We’re talking about the man who made Illmatic and It Was Written, two of the greatest rap albums of all time.

Just because he got help on his fifth best album means little, to me, at least.  Nas’ greatest skill was his ability to flip street narratives, not as a participant, but as a bystander, who’s spent years observing the madness surrounding him. The Untitled album as a project is a complete departure from previous projects, doing away with those street narratives and focusing on racism and the plight of black people.

What I think happened, and I have no real proof, is this: Nas announces that he wants to make this incredible album about the N-word. He sits down to write the album and realizes he might be out of his depth. He calls upon stic.man, who, with M-1, has been making these revolutionary songs for years, for help.

I think there are various kind of collaborations, maybe stic.man throws him a couple of verses, and, yada yada, we have a Nas album that sounds more like a Dead Prez album.