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Nas is seeing great success as of late he even has a classic instrumental in a Tiffany and Co. Davey is a person I can call with hard journalism questions-I literally did just a few days ago. The keynote speaker was Davey D, a journalist I knew from his KMEL days, and who I’d grow to admire and even mimic in his ability to mix hip-hop, politics, and the fight for freedom into one conversation. In response to how our friends and neighbors with roots in the Middle East were being treated post-9/11, I worked with my schoolmates, Agzja Carey and Norah Alyami, to organize a rally in front of Oakland’s City Hall. That first month of school, I got real familiar with the connection between my oppression locally and the oppression of people around the world. Between my taped-up Sony headphones and beneath my tightly wrapped durag, my big head bobbled on the back of the bus-I don't know what I was bumping, but I can tell you that my brain was already brewing up ways to break bondage. A scholarship offered to me through the A Better Chance program landed me at school in one of the wealthiest places in the Bay Area.Įvery morning I’d get on a big 'ole Twinkie bus at Berkeley BART and pursue a better chance of getting out of the hood, going to college, and eventually finding freedom. I was a first-year high school student, living in a small apartment in South Berkeley and attending the Athenian College Preparatory School, 45 minutes away in the town of Danville. Unfortunately, in a lot of ways, my time is spent indirectly paying for continued oppression.Įxactly 20 years ago, Nas was in a dispute with Jay-Z that would be well-documented in a Summer Jam performance, multiple interviews, and of course music-starting with Jay's “The Takeover,” featured on Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint, which dropped Sept. Now I can’t stop thinking: shit, I wanna spend my time focusing on my freedom, too. “Focused on my freedom now.” What an idea. Hill’s extended barrage of bars on “Nobody” are packed with quotable lines, but nothing spoke to me like the idea of spending every second engaged in the process of emancipation.

The album, a follow up to Nas’ 2020 Grammy-winning King’s Disease, dropped the first week of the month and quickly topped Billboard's hip-hop charts. Lauryn Hill, opening her verse on the track “Nobody” from Nas’ latest project King’s Disease II. “All my time has been focused on my freedom now,” says Ms. I spent a week-plus quarantining and staring at my phone-scrolling, contemplating current events and critically thinking about what it all means-you know, in the larger context of this "freedom" we're all inherently pursuing.