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Nas and DJ Premier have revealed the tracklist for his or her long-awaited joint album Mild-Years, and it’s assured to stoke the joy much more.
The hip-hop veterans took to social media on Monday (December 8) to provide followers their first have a look at the eagerly anticipated mission, which drops this Friday (December 12) by way of Mass Attraction Data.
Mild-Years clocks in at 15 songs and contains sequels to a few of Nas and Premo’s most iconic tracks, including to their legacy as one of many best rapper-producer duos of all time.
“N.Y. State of Thoughts Pt. 3” serves because the third installment of their gritty, Rotten Apple-centric sequence which started on Illmatic and continued on I Am…, whereas “third Childhood” is the follow-up to “2nd Childhood,” a storytelling-driven standout from Stillmatic.
The visitor listing additionally nods to Nas’ embellished previous, with longtime partner-in-rhyme AZ making the only real function on the album (on “My Story Your Story”). The Brooklyn MC famously made his debut with a scene-stealing verse on “Life’s a Bitch” earlier than becoming a member of Nas as a member of The Agency (alongside Cunning Brown, Nature and previously Cormega) and having fun with a profitable solo profession of his personal.
Curiously, what was billed because the lead single, “Outline My Title,” doesn’t seem on the tracklist however remains to be price holding in your Esco and Premo playlist as you gear up for the album’s launch later this week.
In a latest interview with Rolling Stone, Nas steered that Mild-Years will embrace just a few older songs that he and DJ Premier recorded once they first made plans for a joint album roughly twenty years in the past.
“I’m going to say not less than two of these concepts occurred on this album,” he revealed. “We didn’t get an opportunity to do ’em once we have been speaking about ’em, however we lastly acquired an opportunity to place these recordings collectively this 12 months.”
The Queensbridge kingpin additionally expressed his pleasure for the mission, saying: “I can’t await individuals to lastly hear it. I don’t find out about anyone else, however for me and him, it was personally a very long time coming for us to do it.”
Mild-Years will mark the seventh and closing installment in Mass Attraction Data’ Legend Has It… sequence, a year-long victory lap of releases from a few of New York hip-hop’s most iconic names.
Slick Rick kickstarted issues in June together with his comeback LP Victory, earlier than passing the baton to Raekwon (The Emperor’s New Garments), Ghostface Killah (Supreme Clientele 2), Mobb Deep (Infinite), the late Massive L (Harlem’s Most interesting: Return of the King) and De La Soul (Cabin within the Sky).
“It’s 1995 once more,” Nas, who co-owns Mass Attraction Data, advised Rolling Stone of the sequence. “Generally I really feel like 2025 has that feeling … [That] urgency, that vibration, the celebration of life and these songs and these albums, what they meant 30 years in the past.”
He added: “It’s a celebration of an ideal impression, a normal that they set that we may always remember as a result of it retains us aiming greater. This sequence is to encourage [and] encourage hip-hop and remind us all [of] the pureness of hip-hop.”
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