With the ‘Legend Has It’ series, Mass Appeal and Nas are betting big on hip-hop

Mike Herard could not believe it. For weeks, the veteran A&R man who operates the estate of late Harlem hip-hop great Big L, was unsure if the verse would ever come to fruition.

Last summer Nas’ team told Herard that the acclaimed Grammy-winning wordsmith and co-founder of Mass Appeal Records had been obsessed with a posthumous Lamont Coleman song the producer was tinkering with. “Large like Free Willy, me broke, don’t be silly,” a razor-sharp Big L proclaimed on the record. But Herard had all but given up on the dream pairing.

“And then one day they were like, ‘Yo, Nas is recording it tonight!’” Herard recalled.

The track, “u aint gotta chance,” is the first single off the Big L’s album Harlem’s Finest: Return of the King. “I was like what the f—? I threw my phone at the wall,” Herard said.

The Big L project, which dropped Oct. 31, features unearthed lyrics from the Diggin’ In the Crates crew standout who was killed in a drive-by shooting at the age of 24 on Feb. 15, 1999. In addition to the aforementioned Nas feature, there are also newly recorded bars from Method Man and Joey Bada$$, a throwback ‘90s Jay-Z freestyle, and an appearance by hardcore Big L fan and late multi-hyphenated artist Mac Miller.

The collection is part of Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It series, which kicked off last June with the surprise full-length album return of rap icon Slick Rick (Victory), the British-born lyricist’s first LP in 26 years, since his 1999 release The Art of Storytelling. Along with MC Ricky D and Big L, the Legend Has It roster includes acclaimed Wu-Tang Clan spitters Raekwon (The Emperor’s New Clothes) and Ghostface Killah (Supreme Clientele 2) and the return of Mobb Deep (Infinite), headlined by the posthumous (and heavy!) vocals of rhyme behemoth Prodigy.

There’s also De La Soul’s Cabin in the Sky (out now), the first official album from the seminal group following the 2023 death of beloved member Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur. The release, which features appearances by Killer Mike, Nas, Common, Black Thought and Q-Tip, is led by the Pete Rock-produced single “The Package.”

“We gotta do this for Dave… the project is for him and for us,” Posdnuos explained during a recent interview on The Breakfast Club. “We’re doing this album with him rhyming from heaven.” 

Last up? Nas is reportedly finishing his long-in-the-making collaboration with pioneering Gang Starr producer DJ Premier. It’s due out in December.

The Legend Has It series is an ambitious statement, for sure. It’s an exclamation point in a year that has seen a run of albums by grizzled hip-hop vets, as detailed in our Ghostface feature. 

“Nas is lowkey,” Ghostface said of his friend who has seemingly been on a one-man mission to elevate hip-hop’s oftentimes unsung contributors. “Just to have him be right by my side and to be supported lets me know that I’m in the right space where I need to be.”

Yet back in 2006, Nas, who took lyricism to new heights with such acclaimed albums as his landmark 1994 debut Illmatic, and multiplatinum followups It Was Written (1996); I Am… (1999); and Stillmatic (2001), was viewed by many as a polarizing figure. The celebrated MC-turned-Wall Street investor received push back from some of his peers, particularly the Southern rap contingent, after declaring that hip-hop was dead. Young Jeezy bristled at the notion.

“Who is [Nas] to say hip-hop is dead?” the Atlanta rapper said in a contentious radio interview with Monie Love. Of course, that’s all water under the proverbial bridge for the respected rap statesman who would go on to appear on Jeezy’s classic 2008 Barack Obama shout-out “My President.”

“We’re all one hip-hop family,” Nas said at a packed Oct. 15 event for the Hip-Hop Museum in Manhattan, where he pledged $1 million to the Bronx site. The figure was matched by Resorts World New York City (in September the Nas-backed casino won a $5.5 billion bid to build a Vegas-style gambling and entertainment hub in Queens) to assist in the museum’s on-going construction.

That same month, Nas’ co-founded Paid In Full Foundation held its third annual Hip-Hop Grandmaster Awards gala in Las Vegas, headlined by honorees Kool G Rap and Grand Puba. It also honored inaugural Quincy Jones Award winner, Parliament-Funkadelic mastermind George Clinton. Recipients, which have included Scarface, Roxanne Shanté, and Rakim, receive $500,000 in acknowledgement for their musical and cultural contributions.

But if watching venture capitalist Nas and his billionaire supporters cut big checks isn’t your thing, perhaps Dr. Funkenstein’s and the Microphone Fiend’s viral impromptu rendition of Rakim’s 1988 classic “Follow The Leader” will get you hyped.

Nas’ barnstorming Legend Has It feature verses on Slick Rick (“Documents“), Raekwon (“The Omerta“), and Mobb Deep’s (“Down For You“) albums continue his rejuvenated run. “I hold your skull with my fingers in your eye sockets/I won’t even snitch to God, I’ma die solid. …” Nas boasts, matching Big L’s sneering energy on “u aint gotta chance.” This does not sound like a man who has grown soft hobnobbing with corporate titans.

“The music I listen to mostly is you (Havoc), it’s Raekwon. It’s Ghostface, it’s Slick Rick, it’s De La, it’s Big L, it’s Biggie, it’s Pac…and on and on,” Nas said in an interview with Havoc of Mobb Deep. “So that’s just a natural thing, for me to wanna rock with my guys. So it was not really that deep of a thought. It was more about how to make it happen… can it happen? Because this would be like a dream.” 

For Havoc, the pairing of the two Queens luminaries was kismet. “In my mind, I asked who could I trust this project with?” he told Andscape, recalling the arduous task he and studio collaborator Alchemist faced in finding the best home for Mobb Deep’s first studio album since 2014’s The Infamous Mobb Deep. 

Havoc takes his role as a staunch preserver of the legacy of Mobb and his late partner-in-rhyme Prodigy very seriously. “There were a few labels out there that offered deals to work with us,” he said. “But I said, ‘Why would I do that when I got Nas right here?’ He’s in position. Working with him was like working with a brother. I trust Nas with this project.”

“Incredible!” Slick Rick told me when asked to describe what it has been like having the Illmatic MC in his corner. “Nas is a kind spirit,” he said. 

In this cut-the-check era, such flowery talk can easily be construed as brazen back slapping. But there’s a welcomed sincerity that permeates throughout the Legend Has It project, even when it comes to its brazen promotional push.

Last September, Mass Appeal announced a partnership with Marvel Comics for an exclusive, limited edition comic book series celebrating the hip-hop immortals. Indeed, it’s not every day you get to see rap greats share the same universe as Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk and Black Panther.  

“Artists, in a sense, are superheroes because they help people get through tough times,” Nas said of the theme behind the team-up in an Oct. 7 Rolling Stone chat. “They lift people up. It’s the music in the gym when people are becoming superheroes. …”

Havoc is downright giddy. “It made me feel like a kid again,” he mused. “The 7-year-old me never thought that I would have my own comic book. Never in a million years.”

Yet such high profile cross-branding would come off as a nostalgic cash grab if the artists didn’t care.

“Everything about my visual album Victory began with Idris Elba in London. … [He] created a safe space for me to step back into my artistry,” Slick Rick said of his surprising collaboration with the British thespian and longtime DJ.

It’s quite inspiring watching Slick Rick, 60, stare down father time in an artform that has been quick to discard its vets.

“We all grew up taking a few pages from your book so to be on a song [with you] was an honor,” Nas said in a June sit-down with Slick Rick at the Tribeca Film Festival (Victory was accompanied by a short film shot in the United States, the U.K. and Africa and starring Slick Rick, Elba, Nas, and British rapper Giggs).

For Nas and countless other artists, fans and serious hip-hop heads that came of age listening to the charismatic, eye-patch-rocking, jeweled-out MC, Slick Rick just as well may have been a real-life superhero. Not only did he look cool, Rick added layered, cinematic weight to hip-hop storytelling, influencing everyone from Snoop Dogg and OutKast to Kendrick Lamar and Doechii.

Yet even before he dropped his 1988 platinum solo opus, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, anchored by the classic single “Children’s Story,” Richard Martin Lloyd Walters was already among rap’s earliest mainstream acts. He’s a storied lyricist who celebrated the 40th anniversary of his seminal hit “La Di Da Di,” a collaboration with Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew.  

“When you’re young and creating from a place of purity, you’re not thinking 10, 20, or 40 years ahead, you’re living in the moment,” Slick Rick recalled of those early days. “Doug and I were just teenagers in the mid-’80s, caught up in the joy of the now. That’s where ‘La Di Da Di’ was born.”

Now Rick, along with his Legend Has It compatriots find themselves navigating a scene where TikTok songs and hot-take podcasters are the new arbiters of taste. Can the kids possibly understand the meticulous work that went into constructing Big L’s “u aint gotta chance.”

Herard had originally intended on using a beat by late genius producer J Dilla. “That verse came from a freestyle that L did in England in 96-97,” he recalled.

But when Herard didn’t hear back from the Detroit visionary’s estate, he tapped “Bad and Boujee” co-producer G Koop to work on the record. “The drums are what survived, essentially,” said Koop. “It was an honor to just still be on the song.”

Herard then made a call to JID producer 2one2 to flesh out the track.

“I added some organ and some synths,” 2one2 said. “It was a very basic melody… kind of repetitive sounding, but it was very raw and gritty, so I was trying to capture that.”

More was added to the pot. Veteran lyricist and associate producer Royce da 5’9″ was recruited to tighten up Big L’s resurrected flow. Along with a Nas voice sample from Al Hug and scratches by DJ Rob Swift, in all seven people contributed to the song.

Meanwhile, Havoc was just trying to keep it together. Since his brother-in-spirit Prodigy passed away in 2017, Havoc had little appetite for a new Mobb Deep release. Thankfully, last year they agreed to greenlight the Infinite project. But as Alchemist and Havoc began resurrecting Prodigy’s vocals, the atmosphere turned surreal.

“I lived a full life, don’t cry for me,” P ironically states on the emotional track “Pour The Henny.”

“Just listening to Prodigy’s acapella, you hear him breathing,” Havoc described. “You hear him talking, but we know he’s not here. Those are the moments that can make you break down.”

Of course, when you have Nas executive producing your album, there is a mutual understanding that is almost instinctive. He was 17 when he first met Prodigy at a 1991 showcase in Queensbridge (the two would even exchange lyrical shots at one another in 2001 before squashing their beef). The first time Nas hit the booth with Rae and Ghost, he was 22. He kicked it with Big L when the Harlem kid was raising hell. He’s toured with De La Soul and dropped classics with DJ Premier. Hell, Slick Rick is Nas’ idol.

The cynics will ask is there a commercial market for the Legend Has It series? Where are the all-important streams coming from? Nas couldn’t care less. 

“He really is a caretaker for hip-hop,” said Herard. “Kool G Rapp recorded Nas’ first demo when he was like 15-16. So for Nas to turn around and honor G Rap at Paid In Full, years later, is huge.”

“This is a culture where anytime you are Black and over 40, they will discard you,” he continued. “So when you have someone like Nas say, ‘Nah, man. We are going to celebrate our heroes.’ That matters.”

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