In-case you don't know, Steve Stoute, who is now in the Advertising world, used to be into managing Rap artist, and he worked with Jay-Z, 50 Cent (before he got shot), and of course, Nas. He was around Nas during the
It Was Written Era, to the
I Am (1999) era. Check out what he says in this interview (with complex magazine) about how he had a vision for Nas-
For those that don’t know, maybe you could just give a brief history about how you started working with Nas in the ’90s?
I was so inspired by Illmatic. Nas had gotten nominated at the Source Awards for Best Lyricist or something like that after Illmatic. He’d gotten in some trouble and he showed up to the event and he wanted the record company to acknowledge his nomination and get him to the event, get him to perform, and support his whole shit.
I had to go to the Queensbridge projects and ask around for Nas. I had a beige Lexus and I was just driving around just cold asking people. Some other projects had beef with Nas or his guys so when I pulled up on Jungle [and his boys], they pulled out guns on me!
But they didn’t do it. They didn’t recognize the award or the nomination. He actually showed up to the awards show with no shirt on. He went with no shirt on, like, “Fuck that.” It was his way of expressing “fuck the record company.”
No one could get into contact with him, Nas has always been uncomfortable with being famous and accessible. Nas makes music because he loves music, not because he wants the trappings of music, such as fame. I had to go find him. I had to go to the Queensbridge projects and ask around for him.
I had a beige Lexus and I was just driving around just cold asking people. That’s me, I’m that guy. Some other projects had beef with Nas or his guys so when I pulled up on Jungle [and his boys], they pulled out guns on me!
They pulled out, thinking, “Why are you running around looking for Nas?” But Jungle had enough sense to be like, ‘I have heard this guy’s name before.” And then it turned into, “Let’s get son, let’s introduce them.” And I met Nas.
Where was your first meeting?
Well he wasn’t in the projects at the time. He lived somewhere else, I just thought he lived in the projects. He lived in another location in Queens, I met him there.
So, just off that, he was like, “I want you to help me get to the next level”?
I had a vision for him. I felt like it was my job to make him the biggest guy in the world. I wanted the world to hear his music. I didn’t want him to become a great lyricist but end up like Kool G Rap, a lyricist the world doesn’t get to hear.
I felt like I could take the responsibility and make the Nas movement bigger and not keep it confined to the Tri-State area, so to speak. He allowed me to do that. When we were together, we made a lot of noise and I made him an international star.
A lot of people love It Was Writtentoday, but at the time of its release did the backlash bother you when people were like, “Why is he working with Trackmasters”?
When I say that Nas is running a different race from 50, I mean, he’s clearly a better artist than 50, so that has nothing to do with it. He just doesn’t want to do the other stuff. Had he chosen to do the other stuff, he could have made a lot more money. He doesn’t even talk about business like that.
The backlash didn’t bother me. I didn’t want it to bother him. I had known that everybody, that most of the artists at the time, wanted him to be the unknown.
It’s really weird. A lot of artists, they were haters. They didn’t want him to ever see the light of day, not at all. They wanted him to be their best-kept secret while they went on tour and they went on to do other things.
It was when “If I Ruled The World” and It Was Written came out that I didn’t want the noise of what they were saying to bother him, I just wanted him to focus on what we talked about him doing, which was making sure the world hear what he had to say.
Nas still speaks very highly of you. But at the time of on “Last Real Nigga Alive” on God’s Son he spoke about losing trust for you. Did that bother you when he spoke about that situation?
No. Nas is an artist who writes from his heart. And relationships in this music business, if having a relationship and a friendship with somebody for 16 years, if you go through a period of a year in which that relationship is rocky, that’s the result of it? That’s a fantastic relationship and I think people should know that.
16 years of friendship, 16 years of coming up together and for us to just have a brief period of time where he thought he should have been doing this and I thought he should have been doing that and we fell out because of that. We’re still friends to this day as grown-ass men.
Did it bother me at the time? You’re sensitive to it because you don’t know what went wrong, like in any relationship. It’s not about harping on that, it’s about looking at what went wrong and building off that. If you talk to Nas today, he’ll tell you.
You had the interview where you said that there’s a race that a Jay or a 50 runs, that Nas doesn’t run. Did it ever create a conflict with Nas being an artist and you being a businessman?
Well, it caused friction. Nas is a good businessman, he wants to do what he wants to do. Just because you achieve the top of what everybody deems financial success or the glorifications of money, or a spotlight on Forbes magazine, or whatever everybody deems as successful.
When I say that he’s running a different race from 50, I mean, he’s clearly a better artist than 50, so that has nothing to do with it. He just doesn’t want to do the other stuff. Had he chosen to do the other stuff, he could have made a lot more money. He doesn’t even talk about business like that.
What’s successful is when you are good at what you aim to do. And I don’t think that Nas has aimed to do anything that he hasn’t done. So he is a good businessman.
He buys real estate, he puts his name next to certain things that he believes in, and he makes great music, but that’s it. That’s who he is. He’ll be making music and touring for 20, 30 years. He’s one of those guys.
You’ve got to look at somebody’s career at like, 60, 70. And then go backwards and start making these determinations. Running sprints and then saying they’re great businessmen, that doesn’t make any sense
At one point, he said that he felt like you were spending too much time with Jay. Did that cause friction in your relationship?
I refer back to my previous answer, you go through a period of time in a relationship and he didn’t have to say that. Any aspect of the relationship in which we didn’t see eye to eye would bother me.
It didn’t make a difference whether it was hanging out with Jay too much or the fact that he didn’t like that his album came out in March when he felt like it should have came out in September. It don’t matter.
You don’t want to have any disagreements with a friend. You know? Not disagreements that become public record and that you still have to answer questions about 10 years later. [Laughs.]
You guys are legendary figures, that’s why you get questions about it 10 years later.
No, I understand.
Another thing that was interesting from your book was about when you were putting together the Will Smith song from Men In Black and SWV’s Coko didn’t want to be in the video even though Will Smith was a big movie star. Were artists afraid to be associated with him at that time?
It’s even worse than that. Nas wrote rhymes on “Gettin’ Jiggy With It” and stopped writing. Nobody wanted to get down with the whole Will Smith thing.
Well, Nas did get down with it.
Yeah, he could have got down with more of it. It was like dragging, kicking, and screaming. The artist was so compelled to be hardcore at the time that anything that felt commercially viable, was not adorned.
Nas wrote rhymes on “Gettin’ Jiggy With It” and stopped writing. Nobody wanted to get down with the whole Will Smith thing. It was like dragging, kicking, and screaming. The artist was so compelled to be hardcore at the time that anything that felt commercially viable, was not adorned.
So, an R&B group like SWV was like, “That’s too corny for me. I’ll sing with Wu-Tang, but I’m not singing with him.” So they didn’t show up at the video. I used that example in the book to show you the sign of the times. “Really? They would actually do that?” Yes. Big movie, international superstar and they wouldn’t stand next to him.
Cause now if that opportunity came up with the new Nick Cannon or whoever they—
They would do handstands. Kanye West raps with Katy Perry.
When you say “kicking and screaming” you meant you literally had to be like, “Dude, just do this. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.”
Yes.
And he only wrote the one record, right?
He may have written pieces of another song, I can’t remember the whole thing.
But he could have written a lot more of it.
Yes! And Will Smith was like, “Look, man. I am a great instrument to sell a lot of records. I want the dudes that are talented with the pen to come be a part of my team to help write those songs.” And he didn’t want to do it.
Did he get in the studio with him, once they were written?
I think they may have gotten in the studio a couple of times, but it wasn’t what it could have been.
He was never in The Firm, man. He should have never been in The Firm. Believe me, he wasn’t. He and Nas truly didn’t get along.
Even when Nas was shouting him out on “One Love” they weren’t cool?
That was cool. He’d just got out of jail. It took him a while to get acclimated to what was going on.
Like in a business sense?
I have arguments all the time with Jay and Puff, would The Firm album have been more successful than The Commission album? We know what The Firm album did and didn’t do, but we never knew what The Commission album was.
In a business sense, and his manger at the time, a lot of different things. He’s actually a really good guy, but he felt like Nas owed him too much and felt like he was too important. He wasn’t a guy that was really driven by a team, at that time, and that caused a problem.
So even when he was on “Affirmative Action,” he wasn’t actually a part of The Firm?
Well, he was at the time. The idea did surround him and he just bugged out. That project should have been fantastic. I have arguments all the time with Jay and Puff, would The Firm album have been more successful than The Commission album? We know what The Firm album did and didn’t do, but we never knew what The Commission album was.
Well, it would have been Jay and Big. So...
It would’ve been Jay, Big, and Kim. But at the time, Nas was much bigger than Jay.
Yeah, he was. But Big…
Nas was big. Foxy was huge.
Yeah, Kim was huge too
Not like Foxy. Foxy’s first album—Jay wrote the album—are you kidding me? Foxy’s first album was crazy. I mean, crazy. Foxy sold more records than Kim, Foxy was huge. Nas was huge. AZ was good. Nature came in and Nature was talented. We had Dr. Dre on the production and Trackmasters.
But we didn’t make the right album and we had people arguing. I want to make the argument from my heart but the reality is that I couldn’t get these guys working together.
