Pete Rock’s Lawyer: Why the Producer May Sue Nas Over ‘Illmatic’ Royalties

Around 1993, Nas — then a hotly tipped teenage rapper assembling a murderers’ row of producers for his debut album — showed up to Pete Rock’s basement studio in Mount Vernon, New York, and the pair started mapping out a song. Rock, whose pioneering boom-bap beats had helped create a template for 1990s New York rap, had already been impressed by the gifted rapper’s previous singles.

But when Rock cued up a mellow piano loop from jazz legend Ahmad Jamal’s 1970 song “I Love Music,” he knew he had something. “That was the first beat, and when he heard it, I saw him just freeze and just start closing his eyes and getting an idea,” Rock told The Source in 2014. Nas asked a reluctant Rock to sing the hook “The world is yours” — a line lifted from Brian De Palma’s kingpin saga Scarface — and began sketching out verses for the track that would end up on his landmark debut, Illmatic.