It is well-known that Illmatic creator Nas and MF Doom once freestyled back to back together. However, the legendary cypher was not caught on camera, but MF Doom’s former assistant, Courtney Brown, detailed the freestyle in a piece for The Source magazine.
Brown met MF Doom through Brooklyn lyricist Talib Kweli and witnessed Nas and MF Doom’s musical energy first-hand. Writing in The Source, Brown wrote, “I moved to LA to assist him as he worked on DangerDOOM. During that time, we spent a lot of time finding inspiration for that album and hanging out with my best friend at the time, Kelis and her husband, rapper Nas.”
She continued, “One day after a bougie LA dinner, I convinced them to come back to my hotel room where DOOM put on some beats, and Nas began freestyling. This lasted nearly an hour. DOOM had his Special Herbs CD on him, and it was a historical moment not captured on camera or recorded.”
According to Brown, the two had a great working relationship until the masked rapper passed away in 2020. In an interview with the online publication HipHopDX in 2012, MF Doom stated, “[Nas is] my brother. My other brother from another mother. We got some work done, but we ain’t record it. He would freestyle and have fun and shit. We should have recorded some of the freestyles this n*gga did.”
He continued, “He did one freestyle over this beat that I got, this Special Herbs beat that nobody used yet, right? The n*gga ripped the whole shit from beginning to end. That’s how you know who’s really nice,” he added. “The muthafucka’s nasty. Certain cats just have a natural knack for it. Nas is nice. That n*gga’s nasty, matter of fact.”
MF Doom also unveiled that he was once invited to a Nas pool party and admitted that it was “dope”. The masked rapper’s widow has recently sued the emcee’s former A&R Egon Alapatt, who last year was accused of stealing the rapper’s rhyme books.
The lawsuit seeks the return of the notebooks, the destruction of any copies, and the prevention of further reproduction or publication of the intellectual property contained in the notebooks.
