Nas Needs an Editor

As Zack de la Rocha told us long ago, it’s important to “know your enemy.” This is something Nas needs to keep in mind the next time he decides to slam a conglomerate.

In response to Fox News’ outrage over Virginia Tech’s decision to let the Queens “gangsta” rapper play a tribute concert at the university after the horrendous shooting last year, Nas has recorded Sly Fox and filmed an accompanying video, directed by Rik Cordero.

I’m definitely down for the cause and it’s always great to see artists take on the corporate Leviathan, but Nas was a little sloppy in this diss track.

First, in one of the opening lines, he says the “sly Fox” owns YouTube. Huh? Ever hear of Google, Nas? I’d like to say that I’m nitpicking, but this is egregious. Especially when News Corp., Fox’s parent company, owns MySpace – the only site that seems to be cutting into YouTube’s dominant market share at any detectable rate.

Second, towards the end of the song Nas raps that

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.’s chairman and CEO, “hate(s) Barack.” Not exactly. Murdoch has been on record for a while as being a fan of the presumptive Democratic nominee.

In fact, he kinda has a crush on him. Check out this quote from the Financial Times on July 11:

Still, with the way the Fox pundits have come down on Obama, one could be forgiven for thinking that their boss isn’t exactly smitten with the senator. And Nas could’ve recorded this before the Rupert-Barack lovefest started.

I’m only pointing all this out, though, because I’m a big fan of Nas. With his influence, he’s one of the few rappers that can maybe get people to question what they see on TV. The video is definitely worth checking out and there’s a vaguely surreal cameo from the hip-hop interwebs’ own Jay Smooth. A little Miss Info never hurt anyone, either

Keep fighting the power, Nas, but next time you take on big media, send me a copy of the lyrics first.