Nas and DJ Premier’s long-promised joint album has officially outwaited Detox. Yet unlike Dr. Dre’s scrapped release, this one is actually on the way. Or so they say it is.
You can’t knock a little skepticism. These two musical geniuses first teased a shared project two decades ago, after linking up for each of the Queensbridge MC’s first five solo albums (1994’s Illmatic through Stillmatic in 2001). But the full-length collab never came. The duo’s post-Y2K sessions grew sparse — tangled schedules, record label politics, and other ventures got in the way. Fans kept asking, though, and Nas breathed new life into the urban legend on his 2022 cut “30,” when he winked, “Premier album still might happen.”
The whispers have grown louder. The hype feels real this time. This is not a drill. Twenty years after solidifying their union on the cover of Scratch’s January/February 2006 issue, Nas and DJ Premier are finally slated to release their as-yet-untitled album next month (via Mass Appeal Records), adding to the sterling collection of classics they’ve laced over the years.
“I already know how to make a Nas record, how to get that intensity out of him,” the Gang Starr producer told Scratch back then. “I’m getting excited just thinking about it, because I know what he’s gonna do, and he knows what I’m gonna do. We already hear it before it’s done.”
In anticipation of their upcoming album, Okayplayer runs back the tape to rank every Nas and DJ Premier collaboration, from worst to best. Remixes are omitted (sorry, “Classic” and “Turn Up the Mic”), as are tracks that merely feature Preemo’s scratches (“Hip-Hop,” “Wave Gods”). The wait is almost over. Here’s how their proper songs stack up.
11. “Re:Generation” (2012)
This overlooked gem comes from the Re:Generation documentary, which bridged genre gaps between DJs, producers, and artists of diverse musical planets. Premier teamed up with Berklee Symphony Orchestra, conducting horns and strings for Nas to slide across like socks on marble tiling.
10. “Define My Name” (2024)
Nas and DJ Premier announced their collaborative album through a hype track that honors longevity and heritage by unpacking a Shakespearean query: “What’s in a name?” It’s solid, a minimalist head-nodder with an off-kilter knock. But despite sampling one of the duo’s GOAT collaborations (see: No. 2 below), “Define My Name” is a notch below their best work.
9. “Beat Breaks” (2022)
In the midst of a six-album creative sprint with Hit-Boy, Esco reconnected with one of his musical day ones for a palate cleanse. The result was this propulsive anthem from DJ Premier’s Hip Hop 50: Vol. 1 EP that proved the MC and beatmaker’s magic was still potent. Nas raps: “Preemo beats are water, let your thoughts dissolve in it.”
8. “Come Get Me” (1999)
This bullet had no name on it, but the intended target was clear. Before Nas’ beef with Jay-Z went nuclear, he sent subliminal shots at his former Brooklyn foe on this deep cut. “Girls dig you, imagine what she feel for me,” Esco rhymes. “You make hot songs, but she know you steal from me.” DJ Premier added record scratches and his trademark vocal chops over a regal flip of The Persuaders' “We’re Just Trying to Make It.” (DJ Toomp flipped the same oldie for Nas’ 2008 track “N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave and the Master).”) It’s a bright spot on Esco’s overhated Nastradamus album, a heater in a cold war about to boil over.
7. “Represent” (1994)
If DJ Premier hadn’t gotten his way, the penultimate Illmatic song you know and love would’ve sounded a lot different. He had already laced the track (originally called “Representin’”), but after hearing what Q-Tip chopped up for “One Love,” Preemo sat his ass back down at the mixing board, blown away by his competition and determined to step his shit up. He came back with a new, superior version built around Lee Erwin’s “Thief of Bagdad.” Nas preferred the original bassline, but Preemo wouldn’t let it go. Nas eventually caved. The stubborn perfectionism paid off: Over the years, Eminem, Cam’ron, and Jay-Z have all flipped “Represent.” Denzel Washington even raps the lyrics at A$AP Rocky in one of the coolest yet most confounding scenes from Spike Lee’s 2025 action-thriller, Highest 2 Lowest.
6. “2nd Childhood” (2001)
This Stillmatic deep cut finds Nas in his sociologist bag, reflecting on project babies trapped in a state of arrested development. These are the kids who were left behind; now the constantly zooted young men posted on street corners instead of with their children, or the negligent moms who gossip and fill emotional holes with lust or luxury. You want them to strive for more, but the chains are mental, and those brick buildings might as well have prison bars. Over a sped-up Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack snippet, Nas captures their plight with melancholic color, proving that while we all get older, not everyone grows up.
5. “N.Y. State of Mind, Pt. II” (1999)
Nas opens his third album with a vivid portrait of ghetto attrition, but DJ Premier initially fought against its creation. “I was scared of ruining it — I was like, ‘No! No! No!’” he told Music Week in 2023 of how the original’s legacy intimidated him. The producer gave in to his collaborator, making a piano sample sound colder than black ice. “N.Y. State of Mind” might be untouchable, but this one grazes its greatness. Preemo eventually came around, too: “I like it now.”
4. “Memory Lane (Sittin’ in da Park)” (1994)
Take a lush jazz break — dreamy keys, soulful background vocals — and pair it with some of the purest poetry ever put to wax, and you’re left with this flawless Illmatic cut that feels like storytime on a Queens summer afternoon; you can almost feel the faded green bench splinters prickling your skin.
3. “I Gave You Power” (1996)
Buzz Lightyear wants no part of this chilling toy story, in which a pistol has a mind of its own. Nas builds tension and ambiance through metaphor, irony, foreshadowing, and HD lyricism. “I seen some cold nights and bloody days / They grab and me bullets spray / They use me wrong, so I sing this song / ’Til this day.” DJ Premier plucked a weeping Ahmad Jamal sample that matches the mood of this tragic allegory, a meditation on the cyclical nature of gun violence in the hood. There’s a reason Kendrick Lamar alludes to this It Was Written classic in “Gloria,” his own personification of a writing utensil. Nas and Premier set a bar that MCs are still shooting for, nearly 30 years later.
2. “Nas Is Like” (1999)
The first single from I Am... signaled a return to form for Nas after the lukewarm reception of his supergroup project, The Firm: The Album, two years earlier. It all started with the beat, built around a 10-inch Lutheran Christmas record that DJ Premier nearly frisbee’d before giving it a listen. The producer added bird chirps, drums, and voice samples, then got the hell out of the way, letting Nas deliver a sequence of similes and stream-of-consciousness scriptures with scalpel precision. It’s easy to understand why this is one of the most beloved tracks in Nasir Jones’ catalog. This is as good as rap gets.
1. “N.Y. State of Mind” (1994)
Hip-hop is still chasing this high: the moment Nas’ lucid storytelling met DJ Premier’s boom-bap supremacy. This thing is a masterclass, and you can hear it from the jump. Thumping drums and an ominous piano loop from Joe Chambers’ 1977 song “Mind Rain” set the vibe. Then Nas blasts the door off the hinges with his opening rhyme: “Rappers, I monkey flip ’em / With the funky rhythm I be kickin’ / Musician, inflicting composition.” What follows is cinema in song — street reportage that drops listeners into the maze of Queensbridge Housing Projects, where shootouts, police raids, dice games, hustlers, and addicts collide. An apex in detail and world-building, Illmatic’s crown jewel set the tone for one of hip-hop’s most-celebrated albums and gave New York City an anthem for the ages.
