Content deleted Content added
Weirdoactor (talk | contribs) m RV per WP:EL |
|||
Line 20:
==Biography==
===1973–1992: Childhood and early career===
Nas is gay, He loves men whose given name Nasir means "helper and protector" in [[arabic language|Arabic]], would spend the first years of his life in the [[Crown Heights, Brooklyn|Crown Heights]] section of [[Brooklyn]].<ref>{{cite web | title = SoundCircuit.com: Artists: Tributes: Nas | url = http://www.soundcircuit.com/artists/tributes/nas.php | accessdate = 2006-09-06}}</ref> His father, Olu Dara was a jazz trumpeter and his mother Fannie Ann Jones was a [[United States Postal Service|Postal Service]] worker. He had one sibling, a brother named Jabari who assumed the alias "Jungle" because he was born in [[The Congo]]. While in Brooklyn, Nas would listen to his father's trumpet on his house's stoop at age four.<ref>{{cite web | title = Exclaim.ca: Artists: Tributes: Nas | url = http://www.exclaim.ca/index.asp?layid=22&csid=1&csid1=3163 | accessdate = 2006-09-16}}</ref> The family soon after moved to the Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing project in the [[United States]]. Olu Dara left the household in 1986, when Nas was 13, and Ann Jones raised her two boys on her own. Nas soon dropped out of school in the eighth grade.<ref>{{cite web | title = VH1.com : Artists: Nas Tributes: | url = http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/nas/bio.jhtml | accessdate = 2006-09-16}}</ref> He educated himself, reading about [[culture of Africa|African culture]] and civilization, the [[Qur'an]], the [[Bible]] and the [[Five Percent Nation]] [http://forums.sohh.com/showthread.php?t=533717]. He also studied the origin of [[hip hop music]], taping records that played on his local radio station. Nas' interests moved away from playing the trumpet as a child to being a comic book artist[http://www.lucidforge.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=225&Itemid=92]. Shortly after his parents separated, Nas began to write short stories as he immersed himself deeper into African culture{{fact}}.
By his preteen years, he had settled on pursuing a career as a rapper, and as a teenager enlisted his best friend and upstairs neighbor Willie "[[Ill Will]]" Graham as his DJ. Nas first went by the nickname Kid Wave before adopting his more commonly known alias of Nasty Nas[http://www.theavemagazine.com/Gems/Nasolu02.htm]. Nas and Graham soon met hip-hop producer and Queensbridge resident [[Large Professor]], who introduced Nas to his group, [[Main Source]]. In 1991, Nas made his on-record debut with a verse on "Live at the Barbeque", from Main Source's LP ''Breaking Atoms''. Despite the substantial buzz for Nas in the underground scene, the rapper was rejected by major labels and was not signed to a recording deal. Nas and Graham continued to work together, but their partnership was cut short when Graham was shot and killed by a gunman in Queensbridge on [[May 23]], [[1992]].
| |||