Nas

 

The more time that passes, the more I kind of can’t believe I once participated in a phone call with Nasir Jones.

I mean really.

At the time of this interview (2011), I had been on-air for less than a year. I was known for playing inappropriately overwrought post-hardcore on an indie rock station. I was covering Tuesday Drive for a friend who was in Thailand. I hadn’t even listened to Illmatic in its entirety, for fucks sake.

I remember my PD at the time looking up from her computer and asking me across the office, “Do you know anyone who would want to talk to Nas?”

It was off the back of the Distant Relatives record, ahead of the tour date in Auckland. I immediately offered it to Che Kamariera, then-host of the True School Hip Hop Show (the obvious choice). He had a dayjob and couldn’t make it in to the studio at the time they’d offered us. Che later suggested Tom Scott (from Homebrew and later, @peace), but we couldn’t really justify airing an interview by an off-station personality. So, having heard the lead single off Distant Relatives, and remembering feeling pretty good about the video to “I Can” (off 2002’s God’s Son) when I was in high school, I put my hand up.

I drank two shots of vodka before getting into studio 3 to wait for the phone call. I was so fucking nervous. Not a pre-Adam-Lambert kind of nervous, not the kind where you’re such a huge fan of the artist that you think “this is something I’ve wanted for so long that I can’t fuck it up and holy shit I just want them to like me”. It was the kind of nervous I get when I suspect that how I sound over the phone will not give me any credibility, any sort of relatability with an artist. I sound like what I am: an overly academic white Canadian girl. If an artist finds you relatable, feels comfortable talking to you, you’ve cut down the preamble time by miles. You can get into the good stuff straight away. You don’t have to spend a few minutes building trust, convincing them that you’ve done your research, you are considerate and interested and a good person to open up to. And I highly doubted that I would have that shortcut with Nas.

So vodka in a coffee mug it was.

For anyone who’s watched or listened to interviews with Nasir Jones, you know that sometimes he is articulate and onto it and engaging… and other times, he’s totally disinterested and (seemingly) high as fuck. I was worried about which Nas I would get. Thankfully, I got the first one. We talked about the African diaspora, how he came into contact with that concept (along with Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters), whether or not musical trends in hip hop reflect real socioeconomic change in black America, why it’s women are underrepresented in hip hop, the importance of countering the crisis narrative around Africa, and more.

“[The perception of Africa] affects African Americans.”

I remember a friend of mine leaving a note on Facebook ahead of this interview saying something to the effect of “If you don’t ask him about homophobia in hip-hop, I’ll never let you forget it.” I wish I could say I was that brave. I wasn’t. I did get him to address misogyny in the genre though, and I think – despite the obviously regrettable choices for the musical interludes – that where we took the conversation is something I can still stand behind.

“It’s going to take artists like Lauryn Hill to combat [misogyny in hip hop]; without even making that her main focus, she just changed that. A lot of female artists have come back and shut people up and slowed down the B.S… you know, they came and smacked us back a little bit and made us recognize and respect. I respect that. And I also like the female artists who make a play on it, that use that to draw people in and then take them on a different journey, you know what I’m sayin? And turn a ‘bitch’ word into a positive connotation behind the shit, you know. I like the females who can show some sex appeal, lure you in, then show you there’s more to her than just sex appeal.”

 

Originally aired February 15th, 2011 on 95bFM.