Nas Is Like

Lore & Background

In the 14 Deadly Secrets by DJ Premier, he said: "This shit is crazy: the day I made this record, I was at my house in Long Island, and I found this old record that I was gonna throw away. It was a ten inch record from a Lutheran church, and it was pink with a black fish on it. And I was gonna throw it in the garbage, 'cuz it didn't look like it had anything hot on it. But somethin' told me 'before you throw it away, put it on the turntable, see if you can find something on it.' And I found that sample of 'Nas Is Like', and I broke it into 3 parts, scratched it live to the drumbeat that I already had, with the little chirpin' birds and from there, 'Nas Is Like' was born, man..." For almost a decade after the track's release, the main sample remained unknown. In April 2008, an unnamed MP3 file featuring the original sample was uploaded by Dusty Kid from Strictly Breaks. The sample was first identified as "Cantata of New Life" by John Rydgren, but later revealed to be John Rydgren and Bob R. Way's 1966 song "What Child Is This?", from their record *Thoughts on the Carols*. The song also contains scratched vocal samples from Nas' previous songs "It Ain't Hard to Tell" (1994) and "Street Dreams" (1996), bird chirps from Don Robertson's "Why", and a vocal sample from Biz Markie's "Nobody Beats the Biz".

Reader's Guide

The A-side of the single includes three versions: "Nas Is Like" (Main) at 3:50, "Nas Is Like" (Clean) at 3:57, and "Nas Is Like" (Instrumental) at 3:57. The B-side features "Dr. Knockboots" (Main) at 2:25, produced by Poke & Tone, along with Clean and Instrumental versions. The track listing is exact: A-Side holds the three "Nas Is Like" mixes; B-Side holds the three "Dr. Knockboots" mixes. The song's structure—braggadocios and introspective lyrics over a choppy string sample—is built from DJ Premier's live scratching of a sample he found on a ten-inch Lutheran church record, broken into three parts and laid over a drumbeat with chirping birds.

Did You Know?

• The main sample was unknown for almost a decade; it was finally identified in April 2008 as John Rydgren and Bob R. Way's 1966 song "What Child Is This?" from *Thoughts on the Carols*.
• DJ Premier found the sample on a ten-inch pink record with a black fish on it from a Lutheran church that he was about to throw away.
• The music video was the first on Nas' YouTube channel to surpass 100 million views.
• The song features scratched vocal samples from Nas' own earlier songs "It Ain't Hard to Tell" (1994) and "Street Dreams" (1996).
• Kendrick Lamar made a freestyle to this song in January 2013 on Hot97.