people. It’s stemming from Africa being the cradle of civilization.”
Though hip-hop and reggae share a lot of the same musical DNA, crossovers in the
past have proved disastrous, as anyone who has ever heard the Run D.M.C. and
Yellowman collaboration, “Roots, Rap, Reggae,” can attest. (It sounds like a Run
D.M.C. track for A Very Special Christmas.) From the outset, the skepticism for
Distant Relatives was as loud as the hype. Marley and Nas are both known for their
bombastic rhetoric (you may recall Nas was crucified in his 1999 video “Hate Me
Now”), so there was no telling how their big “Africa record” would turn out. Nas
was hopeful, telling me, “We feel like it fits the place where it all started. It has
some answers for everyone.”
In the end, it was the hype that proved justified. Nas’s biting monotone and Marley’s
distinct argot spar with each other like two training partners—floating around the
ring, filling the space of each other’s weaknesses with swift jabs.
It’s not the first time the two have worked together. Nas rapped on “Road to Zion,”
off Jr. Gong’s 2005 Grammy-winning record,Welcome to Jamrock. Nas, who
traditionally uses programmed beats was forced out of his comfort zone by Marley,
who uses live instrumentation in the studio. But the two embraced their disparate
styles, spending time listening to “what each other grew up on,” Marley said.
“He would play me some Smif-n-Wessun, some Slick Rick, some KRS [One]. I
would
play him some Shabba Ranks, some Michigan & Smiley.” It’s safe to say
the disruption benefited Nas, who has lived in the shadow of his 1994 debut and
magnum opus,Illmatic. A sense of urgency has returned to his voice.
Yet the most colorful and poignant rhymes come from Somali-Canadian rapper
K’NAAN, whose family fled Somalia‘s war torn capital, Mogadishu, in 1991, when
he was 13. On a song aptly titled “Tribal Wars,” K’NAAN sums up the epidemic of
violence that plagues too much of Africa:
Mindless violence, it gets duplicated/ mindless violence, well let me try to paint it/ Here’s the five steps, in hopes to explain it/ One! it’s me and my nation against the world/ Two! then me and my clan against the nation/ Three! Then me and my fam’ against the clan/ Four! Then me and my brother we no hesitation go against the fam’ until they cave in/ Five! now who’s left in this deadly equation?/ that’s right, it’s me against my brother/ then we point a Kalashnikov and kill one another.
Distant Relatives should be a welcome arrival for hip-hop and reggae fans alike,
with its dancehall rhythms, savvy sampling (the blind duo Amadou & Miriam are
sampled here), and rhymes that remind us of Nas’s immense talent as an M.C.
But it does falter at points, perhaps inevitably, given its core members’ shared propensity for preachiness.
The album’s ethos is best summed up on
“My Generation,” where a choir,
accompanied by the British blue-eyed soul
singer Joss Stone, belts out, “My Generation
will make a change,” and Nas raps, “Can
you blame my generation/ subjected
gentrification/ depicting their frustrations
over ill instrumentation/ cause music is the
way to convey you what I’m facing.” Nas
and Marley are constructing an argument
for how far Africa and its far flung descendants have come, and what they are
capable of. In the third verse, Lil’ Wayne puts a fine point on it: “This generation,
I'm gonna represent/ a generation led by a black president/ now how’s that for
change?”
Distant Relatives is an achievement in collaboration, narrowing the distance be
t
ween hip hop and reggae while staying true to each genre’s roots. Nas and Marley
set their egos aside and produced an album that has the potential to reach kids in
New Orleans, Nairobi, and the Bronx. When I asked Nas if Distant Relatives is
what he had in mind when he named his 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead, he laughed
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