Nas has teamed up with Google to celebrate Black History Month with an open letter praising under-heralded jazz icons and the continued impact of their legacy on American culture. The letter, titled “We Continue To Rise,” appears on Google’s Arts & Culture page and is accompanied by a short video of Nas reading an excerpt from the letter over a jazzy instrumental and images of some of the legends he celebrates.
Name-checking both musical behemoths and relative unknowns like Wes Montgomery, Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong, and Sarah Vaughan and linking them to hip-hop stalwarts Slick Rick and Eric B. and Rakim, Nas stressed the importance of Black music on Black history. Likewise, he points out that Black history is American history, reflecting that he “was raised to understand that every month was Black History Month.”
He also recalls his own first experiments with music in the form of a guitar that his jazz musician father kept in the living room. While he notes he wasn’t great at playing that particular instrument, it instilled in him the love for music that would take him from the Queensbridge housing projects to the Kennedy Center to perform with the National Symphony Orchestra.
Music is powerful in that way, and Nas’ letter serves as a poignant reminder of its impact in our everyday lives and our shared history. Check out the full text below.
Music has scored my life since day one.
Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 – WOW. That music really touched me. And the theme music to Marvel cartoons like the Amazing Spider Man and Iron Man – we used to sing those songs in kindergarten. Most kids have flashing memories of being served lullabies by their parents when they were shorties, and in this regard, I humbly fall, eyes closed, into that plush “most kids” box.
I was blessed to have love from both of my parents, and it just so happens that my father’s love for music took him around the globe via his own sonic excursions, both live and recorded. Pops would come back with mad loot (cash money, that is) from around the world. It was a testament to his globetrotting and a cool little nod to me that said, young blood, when you’re ready, the world is yours.
We had oodles of instruments at the family crib, many of them with origins in the Motherland. It was through the blues and jazz and folk music that my father played that I learned the importance of our history – our African ancestry, our struggles here as black Americans and ultimately, our great triumphs too. Black culture was an everyday thing in our household and in the streets that flowed through the great maze of our beloved Queensbridge: the housing projects that taught me and my comrades a plethora of lessons that were harsh, harrowing and humble.
I messed around a little with the guitar that was in the living room; Pops would throw me and my brother a couple of chords here and there. But, keeping it 100, the next Wes Montgomery I was not. The hollowed-out hole in Pops’ acoustic guitar wound up being a cave for my main man Bat Man. The sound that would reel me in was the sound that I heard reverberating off of the rust-bricked buildings that protected us like the illest castles in Scotland.
That whistle part of Eric B and Rakim’s “My Melody” would bounce from building to building as cars and people jamming boomboxes out their windows pumped the tune in unison; and those radical harmonics lead you to the park where DJ Marley Marl would be spinning that same song (which was easy for him to do since Marley produced said cut and more in his apartment just up the block).
It was a higher consciousness, with all of us in sync and on time like the hands of Big Ben. It was an echo of freedom, the notion that someone who looked like me could have a platform to say what was important, and more importantly be funky. It was another cool little nod that would say to me, young blood, when you’re ready, the world is yours.
I was raised to understand that every month was Black History Month. That every day, my ancestors, contemporaries and everyday dreamers like myself can, shall, and continue to make history.
Our music has been a relentless advocate for our story, which plays a crucial role in the American narrative: Red, white and blues, baby.
I would realize—through the education I received from my parents and my own travels—that Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan and Slick Rick were one in the same. Native storytellers who shined a light on our purpose, preserved our legacy, and, without question, rocked the house. The conversation never stops and we all continue to push it steadily along, through our arts n crafts and even within the way we speak. Bumps in the road can’t stop this. Some might argue that this here scribe is talking a whole lotta jazz but anyone fly enough and culturally astute enough to listen will hear what we’re saying.
We are here. From the beginning. For forever. From science labs to spaceships, from jazz riffs to higher consciousness, we continue to rise.
