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Searching Queensbridge for Nas
The Driveway
Steve Stoute was living with his parents and had decided he wanted to be in the music business, though he didn't know in what role. Sitting in his car in the driveway, he played the Nas single It Ain't Hard to Tell, which is built on a Michael Jackson sample. He couldn't believe the words came from a teenager, and he decided he needed to know this guy.
Searching Queensbridge
With no clear path, he started from ground zero: Nas lived in the Queensbridge projects, so he went there. The projects have no front door, just a cluster of buildings, so he walked up to one and looked for someone to ask where Nas lived or hung out. The man he asked immediately went to get a gun, because Stoute looked like someone his crew had beef with. A second man stepped in and said that guy works with producers, which gave the first man enough doubt to keep talking.
Betting on Nas
The first man was Jungle, Nas's brother, and that conversation led to the meeting. Stoute saw that the people around Nas weren't giving him the chance to be everything he could be, and about 50 people had spotted the same undervalued talent. Nas chose him anyway and put his career in his hands, though Stoute had never done the job before. More than 30 years later they are still brothers.
How does a pop song become a rap sample?
Producers loop a short slice of a recording, and the new track then needs licenses from both the owner of the recording and the owner of the composition. 'It Ain't Hard to Tell' samples 'Human Nature,' from Michael Jackson's 1982 album Thriller. That song was written by Steve Porcaro and John Bettis, not Jackson. Illmatic, the Nas album that includes 'It Ain't Hard to Tell,' came out in 1994.
Why did Queensbridge produce so many rappers?
Queensbridge Houses, in Long Island City, Queens, opened in 1939 and is often described as the largest public housing development in North America. In the 1980s the producer Marley Marl built a home studio in the neighborhood and worked there with the Juice Crew, a collective that included MC Shan and Roxanne Shante. Mobb Deep and Nas came out of the same neighborhood later.
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