Sunday, December 14, 2008

Nas & Large Professor - Extra Nasty


As we continue on... Back in '07, I hit you with the first installment of our emcee/producer collabo compilations, featuring the work of Jay-Z and Nas with the production of DJ Premier. A few months later, Aaron joined the site and spearheaded Soul Brothers, the work of Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth post-breakup (with rarities, b-sides and remixes included). But Aaron wasn't done. Nooo, he put together all the collabs between KRS-One and DJ Premier and later introduced a best-of release for emcee O.C. and beatsmith Buckwild. After that excellent lineup, we put together some nice emcee/emcee tag-team compilations, collecting the works of Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip, as well as Nas and AZ. How's that for a lineup?

Well, Aaron has outdone himself once again! A while back, he hit me up with this novel idea: collecting all the collaborations between emcee Nas and producer/sometimes-emcee Large Professor. Brilliant. Many people know about Large Pro's soundboard wizardry on Illmatic: "One Time 4 Your Mind", "Halftime", and "It Ain't Hard to Tell". Well, did you know that these weren't the first tracks that Extra P provided for Nas? We've Aaron dug in the crates and found some Nas/LP stuff from the early '90's. We're talkin' '91, '92. And no, we're not just lookin' at "Live at the Barbeque", a track many hip-hoppers consider their initiation into the world of the "rebel to America". We've got a pair of tracks from Nas' demo tape. The tracks are mad dusty - just the way we like 'em! You ever heard of "Déjà Vu" or "I'm a Villain"? These are some real gems, so pay heed.

To complete the set, we also included all Nas and Extra P's post-Illmatic work, most notably on albums such as Large Pro's The LP, and Nas' Stillmatic. Every track on this compilation is straight-up vintage shit you must have in your collection. I'm pretty sure none of y'all got every single one of these tracks. Kudos to the heads that do! As far as we know, a promo release titled "Chizzled" from 2005 is the last known Nas track featuring Pro production. It's been too long, we need some more! 'til then, enjoy what history has given us thus far. Peep game (and turn it up!!):

The cover art for this HHIR release was made using Wordle.net's great software. I suggest y'all check it out!