Nas can credit Hit-Boy as a big reason he’s enjoyed a second prime in hip-hop. His King’s Disease and Magic projects made him sound rejuvenated, rhyming over refreshing production that lent well to his strengths as a rapper. He wasn’t doing anything overly experimental that challenged his palette. Instead, Hit-Boy gave him the infrastructure to highlight his lyrical ability without forsaking musicality.
Unfortunately, it seems like the bridge has been burned between the pair. In an interview with DJ Vlad and Elliott Wilson, Hit-Boy said he’s not even on speaking terms with Nas anymore. But it didn’t happen overnight either. Apparently, they’ve cut communications for three years now. “We did 80 songs in three years. I produced almost every single song,” Hit-Boy said.
Despite winning a Grammy together and all of their other accomplishments, the star producer didn’t foresee them ever working together again. When pressed for an explanation, he kept things pretty cryptic. Still, it’s not a sore enough subject for him not to appreciate the strong bodies of work they made together.
“We did a lot of great work, but I don’t see us working again,” he told Vlad and Wilson. “There’s a lot of reasons, you know what I mean? But it’s something I don’t really wanna dig too deep in ’cause it’s pretty deep. Respect to what we did get accomplished in three years.”
Nas and Hit-Boy Might Never Work Again, According to the Producer
Although they had great synergy, the connection wasn’t super deep for the Illmatic rapper. In a 2021 interview with i-D, Nas admitted that it was basically just trying to get some rhymes out of his head. He was already a big Hit-Boy fan. Once the COVID-19 pandemic caused a nationwide shutdown, a couple of songs turned into a full album.
“I was just trying to record music. It just so happened that the world stopped just as we started doing the two songs. He kept on at me to come up to the studio and work, and he pushed me to make it work. I was already a fan of his work,” Nas explained.
“So I knew if we got in a room we would do something cool. I knew there would be great shit, but I didn’t know if that would be one song, two songs, or five songs. I definitely didn’t know it would be an album.”
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