Nas and DJ Premier announce release date for collaborative album
Nas and DJ Premier have announced the release date for their long-awaited collaborative album.
The rapper/producer duo have a rich history of collaborating on songs like ‘NY State of Mind‘, ‘Nas is Like’, and ‘2nd Childhood’, but now a whole project is confirmed.
During a show in Europe this week, Preemo announced that the currently untitled album will be released on December 12th.
While touring the UK with The Alchemist as part of the He’s the Preemo, I’m the Chemist World Tour, Premier told fans, “How many people are ready for that Nas, Premier album? Are you ready for it? December 12th, get ready, motherfucker,” before playing their classic Illmatic song, ‘Represent’.
The pair released the first single ‘Define My Name’ in April 2024 as a taster of what’s to come from the project.
Nas and Premier’s album is the final project to be released as part of a series of legendary artists dropping projects on Mass Appeal Records in 2025, following Slick Rick, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Mobb Deep, Big L, and De La Soul.
In October, Nas provided an update on the LP. Speaking to Rolling Stone, he said, “I can’t wait for people to finally hear it. I don’t know about anybody else, but for me and him, it was personally a long time coming for us to do it.”
When asked about their past plans, he said, “I’m going to say at least two of those ideas happened on this album. We didn’t get a chance to do ’em when we were talking about ’em, but we finally got a chance to put those recordings together this year.”
Mass Appeal co-founder Peter Bittenbender told Music Week that he had been fighting for the project to be released for 12 years, calling it “a pure hip-hop album in its highest form.”