Watch Nas Debuts New J Dilla & Madlib Collaboration at SXSW.
Nas and J Dilla is one of those collaborations rap nerd’s wet dreams are made of. The pair actually joined forces (posthumously, of course) in 2014 on “The Season,” but it was a bittersweet affair. Sure, Nasty Nas was rhyming in rare form over a Jay Dee joint(!), but the beat — yanked off 2006’s Donuts — was almost a decade old and, at that point, already a favorite among Dilla disciples.
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However, with J Dilla’s long-lost vocal album The Diary set to drop next month through Nas’ Mass Appeal Records, the lane is wide open for more collaborations between the two hip-hop icons. For proof, look no further than Esco’s performance at SXSW last night, where he debuted a bonus track off The Diary called “The Sickness,” which finds him and Dilla trading bars over a Madlib beat.
The audio quality isn’t great (in fact, it’s pretty terrible), but at least we only have to wait four weeks to hear the CDQ — The Diary drops April 15.
