Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, better known by his stage name Nas, is an American rapper. Rooted in East Coast hip hop, he is regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time. The son of jazz musician Olu Dara, Nas began his musical career in 1989 under the moniker "Nasty Nas", and recorded demos for fellow East Coast rapper Large Professor. He was later featured on the 1991 song "Live at the Barbeque" by his group, Main Source.
Stillmatic is the fifth studio album by American rapper Nas, released on December 18, 2001, by Ill Will and Columbia Records. In contrast to his previous work's gangsta rap themes, the album contains socially conscious and philosophical themes similar to that of his 1994 debut Illmatic. Nas' lyrics address topics such as ghetto life, American politics, and his feud with rapper Jay-Z.
Anderson Hays Cooper is an American broadcast journalist and political commentator currently anchoring the CNN news broadcast show Anderson Cooper 360°. In addition to his duties at CNN, Cooper serves as a correspondent for 60 Minutes on CBS News. After graduating from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1989, he began traveling the world, shooting footage of war-torn regions for Channel One News. Cooper was hired by ABC News as a correspondent in 1995, but he soon took more jobs throughout the network, working for a short time as a co-anchor, reality game show host, and fill-in morning talk show host.
The Source is an American hip hop and entertainment website, and a magazine that publishes annually or semiannually. It is the world's longest-running rap periodical, being founded as a newsletter in 1988 by David Mays.
María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien is an American broadcast journalist and executive producer. Since 2016, O'Brien has been the host for Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien, a nationally syndicated weekly talk show produced by Hearst Television. She is chairwoman of Starfish Media Group, a multiplatform media production company and distributor that she founded in 2013. She is also a member of the Peabody Awards board of directors, which is presented by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
"You Owe Me" is a 1999 single by Nas featuring Ginuwine, from Nas' fourth studio album Nastradamus. The single was produced by Timbaland. "You Owe Me" was a hit on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, peaking at number thirteen, and it was also a minor hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 59. A music video directed by David Meyers was also released; it had a cameo featuring Destiny's Child & DMX. The song has been referenced by Jay-Z in "Blueprint 2", and also by J. Cole in his track "Let Nas Down".
"Halftime" is a song by American rapper Nasty Nas, who would change his name to Nas after the release of the song. The song was released as his debut single, the sole single from the Zebrahead soundtrack album and the lead single from his debut album Illmatic, on October 13, 1992. "Halftime" was produced by Large Professor and features samples of drums and vocals from "Schoolboy Crush" by Average White Band, horns from "Soul Traveling" by Gary Byrd, and the bassline from "Dead End" from the Japanese cast recording of the musical Hair. The song was the first song created for Illmatic, and was released circa one and a half years earlier than the album.
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is a 2006 documentary film directed by Spike Lee about the devastation of New Orleans, Louisiana following the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina. It was filmed in late August and early September 2005, and premiered at the New Orleans Arena on August 16, 2006 and was first aired on HBO the following week. The television premiere aired in two parts on August 21 and 22, 2006 on HBO. It has been described by Sheila Nevins, chief of HBO's documentary unit, as "one of the most important films HBO has ever made." The title is a reference to the blues tune "When the Levee Breaks" by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
David Martin Shuster is an American television journalist and talk radio host. He most recently served as principal anchor and managing editor for i24 News, previously serving as an anchor for MSNBC and worked for Fox News, CNN, Current TV, The Young Turks and Al Jazeera America.
Illmatic is the debut studio album by American rapper Nas. It was released on April 19, 1994, by Columbia Records. After signing with the label with the help of MC Serch, Nas recorded the album in 1992 and 1993 at Chung King Studios, D&D Recording, Battery Studios, and Unique Recording Studios in New York City. The album's production was handled by DJ Premier, Large Professor, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, L.E.S., and Nas himself. Styled as a hardcore hip hop album, Illmatic features multi-syllabic internal rhymes and inner-city narratives based on Nas' experiences growing up in the Queensbridge Houses in Queens, New York City.
Brian Douglas Williams is an American retired journalist and television news anchor. He was a correspondent for NBC Nightly News starting in 1993, before his promotion to anchor and managing editor of the broadcast in 2004.
Ilyasah Shabazz is an American author, community organizer, social activist, and motivational speaker. She is the third daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, and wrote a memoir titled Growing Up X.
Jeffrey Johnson is a communications specialist and journalist. He appeared on the TV show Rap City on the BET cable network in the United States, where he spoke about such issues as violence and voting.
Peter Eleftherios Baker is an American journalist and author. He is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for MSNBC, and was previously a reporter for The Washington Post for 20 years. Baker has covered five presidencies, from Bill Clinton through Joe Biden.
Treme is an American drama television series created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer that aired on HBO. The series premiered on April 11, 2010, and concluded on December 29, 2013, comprising four seasons and 36 episodes. The series features an ensemble cast including Khandi Alexander, Rob Brown, Chris Coy, Kim Dickens, India Ennenga, John Goodman, Michiel Huisman, Melissa Leo, Lucia Micarelli, David Morse, Clarke Peters, Wendell Pierce, Jon Seda and Steve Zahn, as well as musical performances by several New Orleans-based artists.
Trymaine D. Lee is an American journalist. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Hurricane Katrina as part of a team at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. From 2006 to 2010, Lee wrote for The New York Times and from early 2011 to November 2012 he was a senior reporter at The Huffington Post. Since then Lee has been a national reporter for MSNBC, where he writes for the network's digital arm, and hosts the podcast Into America.
Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas'sIllmatic, edited by Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai, is a collection of scholarly essays and historical documents presenting Illmatic from an academic perspective. The book features contributions from scholars and intellectuals such as Adilifu Nama, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., James Peterson, Marc Lamont Hill, Mark Anthony Neal, Imani Perry, Kyra Gaunt, and Eddie S. Glaude among others. It also includes a preface written by Common. In the introduction, Sohail Daulatzai explains the structure of the book, writing:
Born to Use Mics, encompasses the different styles and forms of hip-hop publishing, from the scholarly to the journalistic, the historical to the first-person account, using freestyles and wile styles to wax philosophic on the meaning of Illmatic. But the final mix you hold is more than the sum of its parts, as we’ve brought together an eclectic group of writers, scholars, poets, filmmakers, journalists, novelists, musicians, and combinations thereof who have all grown up with hip hop and have been deeply connected to it from jump. In essence, Born to Use Mics is a literary remix, a cipher in book form as well of these contributors offer up unique and fresh perspectives, as they mediate on the significance of Illmatic.
Adam Mansbach is an American author. He has previously been a visiting professor of literature at Rutgers University-Camden, with their New Voices Visiting Writers program (2009–2011).
Imani Perry is an American interdisciplinary scholar of race, law, literature, and African-American culture. She is currently the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, a Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and a columnist for The Atlantic. Perry won the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction for South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. In October 2023, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Kevin Coval is an American poet. Coval is a Chicago-based writer who is known for exploring topics such as race, hip-hop culture, Chicago history, and Jewish-American identity in his work. He is also known for his appearances in four seasons of the Peabody Award-winning television series Def Poetry Jam on HBO.
