He calls himself God’s Son, Street’s Disciple, Nas Escobar, Nasty Nas and Nastradamus, but you might know him simply as Nas. No, Nasir Jones doesn’t need an introduction, most legends never do – if there were a Mt. Rushmore of hip-hop, he would be Thomas Jefferson. He doesn’t need to tell you his name, but he would like to tell you that he is, as far as he can remember, playing Eugene for the first time ever on Wednesday.
“I’m gonna do shows in places I haven’t been before. It’s still places I haven’t been to in years. So, we getting it open again. Just opening up the whole thing again, all throughout the country,” he said.
Wednesday night’s show at the McDonald Theatre will mark the beginning of a short five-stop Northwest tour that moves up I-5 through Portland and Seattle and finishes in Vancouver, B.C. It will be his first time back in the region since opening for Public Enemy at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Arts Festival in 2005. The tour will be a warm-up for his summer stint as co-headliner of 2008 Rock the Bells International Festival Series. In only its second year as a touring festival, Rock The Bells will feature fellow headliners A Tribe Called Quest, a newly reunited Pharcyde, De La Soul, and Rakim and will play to audiences of 45,000 all across North America.
“Rock The Bells been real good to me and I got a lot of love for those guys that put that tour together. It’s really made me want to do tours more and go out there with that headlining thing that I can do. I’m ready,” he said. Naturally, the tour will not be coming anywhere close to the northwest, but it certainly makes a good excuse for a summer road trip.
Nas will be supporting the summer release of his third album in four years, the follow-up to 2006’s “Hip Hop Is Dead,” controversially and confrontationally entitled “Nigger.” Without any professed political agenda or Spike Lee-style commentary on racial harmony, it is a powerful title that Nas insists is simply to keep people speaking with truth.
“I’m trying to enforce something to open up the dialogue without the hypocrisy. You know what I’m saying? Just be real,” he said.
Naturally, the title has generated extensive negative reaction, most notably from the perpetually outraged Reverend Jesse Jackson. And, naturally, Nas doesn’t care. “My concern is really with people that listen to the music. There’s going to be all kinds of dudes that don’t listen to our music and want to say what they feel. But this is for the people that listen to this shit. So whatever. I’m not paying attention to what nobody is saying right now,” he said.

As is typical with any Nas release, “Nigger” will feature a who’s who of the nation’s hottest producers working their magic behind the boards. In addition to Nas mainstay Salaam Remi, LA’s DJ Khalil and southern all-stars Jermaine Dupri, Polow da Don and DJ Khaled will also try their hand at Nas’ NYC rapid-fire verses.
“If you’re a real producer, when you work with a particular artist, you know what they want and you kinda can crash something for them,” Nas said. “It don’t matter where you’re from if your shit is right and you can crash your style into their style and produce something brand new by both y’all.”
It has been 14 years since Nas released the landmark “Illmatic” to become one of the influential and knowledgeable voices in rap and music in general, and now, as the United States approaches a presidential election poised to stir a dramatic shift, Nas’ voice remains as loud and progressive as ever. “I’ve never been a big supporter of politicians ever, but this is definitely a time that the world gets more aware about the politics because we got a great chance for a great new start and a rebuilt America,” he said. “I’m in love with that right there. I think this is going to be great. Scary, but great.”
Scary but great is exactly what it would be like if we’d just give Nas the White House. “First I’d give everybody a little bud and let everybody be easy. But then I’d open up a lot more opportunity in the world, man. I see where health services suck. I see where kids can’t get proper health care, and that sucks that kids can’t get no education,” he said. “I’ve been to Dubai and kids go to school for free there. In Cuba, there is so many geniuses there and they aid their people well. They even sent people to Pakistan when the earthquake hit. They just show love. Other parts of the world just show love without just asking for something back. So I think I’d make America more real like that, you know?”
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