Nas’ favourite memory of Prodigy: “One of the best”
Just last week Nas sat down with Rolling Stone magazine for an interview that discusses not just his decades-long career, but what’s been keeping him busy recently, too. And busy is to put it lightly. The New York rapper is launching a new project to honour hip-hop legends, an album series called Legend Has It… which will include releases from rap stars associated with Nas’s label Mass Appeal Records, such as Ghostface Killah, Slick Rick, Raekwon, and Mobb Deep, as well as a posthumous record from Big L.
The musician, a pioneer of the East Coast hip-hop scene who is considered by many to be one of the greatest rappers of all time, sees artists akin to superheroes. The project’s partnership with Marvel, which has created an accompanying comic for the series, is a suitable one, if not even personal and purposeful. “We just manifested being fans of Marvel,” Nas explained.
There is one titan of the genre, though, whose absence Nas is acutely aware of. With Mobb Deep’s ninth and final studio album Infinite released last week with Mass Appeal Records, nearly a decade after Prodigy’s death in 2017, Nas paid tribute to his fellow New York rapper and record producer, whose vocals feature on the album.
“Prodigy’s one of the best,” Nas said. “It’s unfortunate that he’s not here because he was a presence in hip-hop that was heavy. He still is.”
“Their albums are classic albums,” Nas continues. “People throw that word around too loosely – but these guys made serious music. And Prodigy’s raps, it was some of the best top-tier MCing we’ve ever heard. And for Havoc to give us Prodigy today, for Prodigy’s family to give us Prodigy today, is a blessing to all of our ears because he brings us back to when shit was high level top-tier MCing.”
Nas and Prodigy have a long relationship that saw the rappers collaborate on music together as well as feud, taking shots at each other on Nas’s Destroy and Rebuild and Prodgy’s feature on Thun & Kicko. The duo, who grew up together, eventually reconciled. When asked his favourite memories of Prodigy as a person, Nas expresses his respect for the musician, saying, “there’s a picture that I want to get blown up. It’s like Prodigy’s about to tell me something and I’m looking off into the distance.”
“We were in New York.” he continues, “Every time we would see each other in the type of environment that was a show or something like that, it was a together feeling, like “we’re in this together” in the song Eye for an Eye. Outside of that, we were different, wasn’t seeing each other, but when we seen each other in a music place, where there’s live and we would communicate there. Me, him, and Hav, it would be brief, but it would be a happy family moment.”
This isn’t the first time Nas has been direct in expressing his respect and love, for Prodigy. After his passing, Nas paid tribute on his album The Lost Tapes 2, where he raps on QueensBridge Politics “on behalf of me and Queens and all of the Gs / Bandana P will always stand as tall as the trees.” For the uninitiated, Bandana P is a reference to Prodigy, and Queensbridge Houses is the neighbourhood where Nas and Prodigy grew up.
Infinity was announced in 2024 by Havoc, Prodigy’s partner in Mobb Deep, and was produced by Havoc and the Alchemist, who the group have collaborated with since the ’90s.