Last year, Nas shocked the world with a new song called "The Season" produced by J Dilla. Now that his Mass Appeal record label is releasing Dilla's long lost The Diary album later this year, Nas took the time to premiere another song with the Detroit legend called "The Sickness" at SXSW this week. You can hear him debut it live above.

The song, produced by Madlib sounds knocking, though it's hard to get the real feel of it via live recording. Nas sounds excellent next to Dilla though, just as he sounded ill on the Dilla beat for "The Season."

We know you've heard this before, but Nas might also be finally gearing up to drop Lost Tapes 2 this year. In an interview with Drip last year, Mass Appeal's Creative Director Sacha Jenkins and CEO Peter Bittenbender said Lost Tapes 2 would come out after Nas's next album for Def Jam.

"Nas is working to deliver this next record to Def Jam," said Bittenbender, "which will be his last [for them]. I haven’t been too involved in that, so I can’t tell you when it’s coming. Once that’s out, then Lost Tapes will follow shortly after. It’ll definitely be a 2016 release, hopefully earlier in the year than later. The music’s amazing. It carries on what he built with the first Lost Tapes. The fans are gonna love it."

You'll remember Nas saying he was gonna drop an album in 2015, but it never materialized. In a recent interview with DJ Khaled, Esco said he's been in the lab recently, so that album might be on the way. “Yeah, makin’ new records,” he says. “For awhile, just trying to feel the inspiration. One month I know what I’m doing, the next month I’m starting all over again. So it’s a lot of that.”

Hear a live rip of the Dilla and Nas joint "The Sickness" above.

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