One Of Kanye West’s First Productions Featured Nas
“WARNING” (1994)
“Who the fuck is this? Paging me at 5:46/In the morning, crack of dawn and/ Now I’m yawning”
“Who the hell is this?/Calling me at 12:47 in the night/While I’m watching the fight”—NICKI MINAJ, “WARNING” (2007)
“Now-now-now-now-now who the hell is this/ E-mailing me at 11:26/Telling me that she 36-26, plus double-D”—KANYE WEST, “GET EM HIGH” (2004)
In an interview with RollingStone, Nas related 20 of his personal songs to his l life and growth as an artist, revealing some surprising facts, including a not so famous Kanye West producing “Poppa Was a Playa”.
“This was also one of Kanye’s first production. I didn’t even know him at the time. He just came through via someone else,” said Nas when discussing the roots of the song.
The song is featured on The Lost Tapes (2002), a compilation album of never before released tracks created in the midst of recording I Am (1999) and Stillmatic (2001).
The lyrical guru also went into detail as to where he drew inspiration for the song and how he turned it into his own work of art.
“I was really just feeding and channeling the Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." When I was a kid, I had a friend and his stepdad's name was Papa. This friend is dead now, but he didn’t really like Papa that much because Papa was a dope fiend. When the Temptations song came on, he sang it a little extra. We were kids at this point and that stayed with me forever. My pop was not a dope fiend—my pop was my pop—so I talked about him.”
You can read the entire interview here.—Morgan Murrell
More From XXL
