Nas (ft. Busta Rhymes) -- "Fried Chicken" (2008)

Mrs. Fried Chicken
You was my addiction
Drippin' with high cholest'

Like Greeks with their falafel
Or Italians with their tomato pasta
Or roti is to a rasta

Trappin' me
You and your friend mac and cheese

Candied yams, collard greens

Who knows more about rap music than Forbes magazine?

Well, Forbes has this to say about today's featured artist:

Ask just about any hip-hop fan to recite a list of the top rappers of all time, and a name almost certain to come up is Nasir “Nas” Bin Olu Dara Jones.  Since his classic 1994 debut, Illmatic, the Queens-bred rhymester has grown a wide fan base ranging from rap aficionados to the late Amy Winehouse, who sang his praises in “Me and Mr. Jones.”  Even onetime rival Jay-Z enshrined Nas as a member of hip-hop’s holy trinity in the song, "Where I'm From."

(That "holy trinity" included the Notorious B.I.G., Nas . . . and Jay-Z himself – of course.)

Nas is not only a rapper whose "lyrical prowess is acknowledged by millions," but also the first major hip-hop star to become a "verified genius" on the incomparable RapGenius.com website, where he has posted explanations of many of his lyrics.

Nas with Rap Genius co-founder
Mahbod Moghadam

According to Forbes, other Rap Genius verified rappers include the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and A$AP Rocky.  The website has about a hundred thousand contributors and several hundred handpicked volunteer editor -- including little ol' moi.

Click here to read what Rap Genius has to say about "Fried Chicken," which has more clever wordplay than you can shake a stick at.

Nas uses fried chicken as a metaphor for his woman.  Both the chicken and the woman are irresistible, but may not be healthy for your heart:

Mmmm, fried chicken, fly vixen

Give me heart disease 

Nas can't decide whether he likes dark meat or white meat better:

Don't know what part of you I love best

Your legs or your breasts

Listen carefully to the lines quoted at the top of this post, which you can hear at about 0:57 of the song.  The rhymes, the phrasing . . . even the elision that turns "cholesterol" into "cholest-" – it's rap genius.

Here's "Fried Chicken":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Nas -- "N.Y. State of Mind" (1994)

I never sleep

'Cause sleep is the cousin of death

It's been quite a while since our last "Hip-Hop 101" lecture.  Did you think your professor was ill, had died, had gotten fired, or had run off with that hot French student who never wears a bra to class?

Never fear -- we're going to get through the class syllabus sooner or later.  (Cross my heart and hope to die!)

Nas (circa 1994)

New York City was the birthplace of rap music, but West Coast gangsta rappers like N.W.A., Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, and Snoop Dogg came to dominate the rap scene by the early 1990s.  But then a new generation of New York City MCs -- including the Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, and Nas -- burst on to the scene.

Nas -- his real name is Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones -- was not quite 21 when his debut album, Illmatic, was released in 1994.  Some critics rank it as the best rap album of all time, and nearly all of them rank Nas very high on the list of the greatest MCs. 

Nas is a consummate storyteller who's not afraid to innovate and experiment.  (The narrators of Nas's songs include a fetus, a corpse, and a gun.)  His lyrics feature an extensive vocabulary and complex rhymes, but he never lets the fancy wordplay interfere with his flow. 

Nas often raps about life on the street -- his songs have an authenticity and nitty-grittiness that sets them apart from hip-hop poseurs.  (Some MCs seem to have learned everything they know about guns and drugs from the movies.  Nas's tracks often have a cinematic quality, but are more like documentary shot with a handheld camera than Scarface or New Jack City.)

I don't know if Nas is a fan of the Iliad, which describes Hypnos (who personifies sleep in Greek mythology) and Thanatos (who personifies death) as twin brothers.  I think Nas's description of sleep and death as cousins is more apt than Homer's description of them as twins -- sleep and death share certain characteristics, but are quite different.  (The Jewish Talmud says that sleep is 1/60th part of death -- more like cousins than twin brothers, in other words.)

Hypnos and Thanatos: "Sleep and His Half-
BrotherDeath," by J. W. Waterhouse (1974)

In "Enter Sandman," Metallica advises the little boy who is scared of the dark to "sleep with one eye open."  It is possible for humans -- especially children -- to sleep with one or both eyes open.  But if you do sleep with one eye open, you wouldn't see anything -- so it doesn't do you any good.

Nas probably isn't talking about sleep in the literal sense.  If the narrator of this song is caught off-guard by one of his many enemies -- that is, if he's "caught sleeping" -- his carelessness could result in his death.  

The CBS "eye"

Speaking of Jay-Z, he released a song a couple of years later that featured this line: "So I keep one eye open like C-B-S."

You get that, right?

2 or 3 lines believes in giving credit where credit is due, and I need to credit Rap Genius -- click here to read the Rap Genius commentary on "N.Y. State of Mind."

Here's "N.Y. State of Mind":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon: