In the "New York State of Mind" episode of Hip-Hop Evolution, directed by Darby Wheeler, various musicians and industry figures give high praises and insight into Nas and his masterpiece of a debut, the highly acclaimed Illmatic (1994).
The music executive Faith Newman, an executive producer on Illmatic and former A&R for Columbia Records that got Nas signed to the label, remarked that in using his writing to express himself so poetically on Illmatic, Nas was like "Shakespeare, but from Queensbridge."
Very clearly this is a heart felt way of praising Nas' abilities as a writer. However, it made me curious to dig deeper into how exactly do rappers, and the entire hip-hop community, actually relate to the larger literary world and figures that are staples of English literature like Shakespeare?
Who is the Bard of Queensbridge?
I'm sure Faith Newman's compliment about "Shakespeare, but from Queensbridge," was not meant to be read this deeply, but if Shakespeare and Nas were to actually be compared, what exactly would we find about what created their writing abilities and what makes exactly makes them tick?
According to Dympna Callaghan’s Who was William Shakespeare?: An Introduction to the Life and Works (2013), Shakespeare was born in England in1564, more precisely in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire. His mother, Mary, came from the well-to-do Arden family, while his father John was a successful tradesman, speculator, glove maker, and overall prominent community figure in Stratford.
John held various offices of high esteem in Stratford, such as becoming an alderman in 1565 and a bailiff by 1567 or 1568, a leading position in the community which is different from how we usually use the term today.
John Shakespeare and his family did eventually go through financial difficulties, and in terms of the class status of his family name, waited a long time to receive a coat of arms and become a true gentleman, or of “gentle status,” as Dympna Callaghan explains.
John first applied for a coat of arms in the late 1560s or early 1570s, though he wouldn’t be granted it until 1596, when I believe William applied under his father’s name.
Though he and his wife were likely partially or fully illiterate, which wasn't uncommon, John Shakespeare’s obtainment of respectable offices in Stratford-upon-Avon directly translated to the education William Shakespeare was afforded as a child, with Stratford being home to a very successful grammar school at the time.
The first reading item related to education that most children of Shakespeare’s time utilized was the hornbook, a small wooden paddle used to drill in the child’s brain the characters of the alphabet, vowels, consonants, and prayers like “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti" and the Pater Noster.
Children didn’t just read the contents of the hornbook but were expected to rigorously study and recite much of it, sometimes both forwards and backwards according to a quote Dympna Callaghan gives from A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching (1661) by Charles Hoole, a 17th century educational writer and English clergyman.
To my understanding, children at very young ages, both boys and girls, could be instructed in reading and aided by literate men or women, either parents or other community members, though formal education became more rigidly for males as one got older.
The first type of school facility young children in Elizabethan England attended was the petty school, beginning around the age of 4. This was for kids who weren’t old enough for grammar school but needed to get prepared.
In Stratford, the petty school was held in a chapel of the Guild Hall or Guildhall, with both William Gilbard and Thomas Parker being licensed as petty school teachers during the years Shakespeare would have been going, which he most likely did.
At some point during this time, and after learning from the hornbook, pupils used a primer called the ABC book, eventually moving onto grammar school somewhere around the age of seven.
Stratford’s highly successful grammar school was headed by Simon Hunt during the first half of the 1570s when Shakespeare would have been in attendance, and which he was guaranteed a free seat in due to his father having been an alderman.
Grammar school, as Dympna Callaghan states, was centered on learning Latin grammar, as it was expected that the students, limited to boys, already had a foundation in English.
The scholar William Lily’s An Introduction of the Eyght Partes of Speche, or “Lily’s Grammar,” was a textbook used in grammar schools at the time, the only one to be authorized through a proclamation by King Henry VIII in 1542. The first half was in Latin, while the second was in English.
Within the grammar school’s goal of cementing mastery in Latin composition, as well as advancing one’s skills in reading and rhetoric, there was also an expectation you would be well versed in various writings of classical antiquity.
This included Aesop’s fables, which was read by those who were less advanced, while those who were more skilled read Roman poets of the Late Republic and early empire such as Virgil, known for works like his epic the Aeneid, or Ovid, known for his extensive Metamorphoses.
Shakespeare’s schooling is not known to have gone past his early teens, it seems because of the financial trouble his father was in by the time. However, I would argue that the foundation that allowed him to become the skilled poet and playwright he is known as had already been established by the time he left.
For one, some of the sources he used for his plays were introduced to him in grammar school. Shakespeare repeatedly referenced Ovid’s Metamorphoses, such as in his use of characters like Theseus or the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, all of which show up in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The main source for his The Comedy of Errors was Menaechmi, a play by the Roman playwright Plautus, who was also read by English grammar school students, along with others such as Terence.
Even if he wasn’t directly exposed to something in grammar school, much of the foundation for Shakespeare's further exploration into the world of literature seems to have been formed in school.
As another example of his usage of classical texts, a key source for Shakespeare's Roman histories and tragedies like Julius Caesar or Coriolanus was Plutarch’s Parallel Lives or Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, specifically the English translation done by Sir Thomas North, first published in 1579.
In short, I believe that Shakespeare’s time in school had a vital effect on his literacy and ability to become a prolific writer.
In contrast, if I was to say anything about Nas, it would certainly not be that he learned how to rap from going to school.
Like Shakespeare, Nas did not continue school past his early teens. In Time Is Illmatic (2014), directed by One9, he states that he dropped out either in the 8th or 9th grade, following what seems like countless school experiences where his passion for learning was completely wiped away.
Jungle, Nas' younger brother, went to Junior High School 204, which may refer to Oliver W Holmes. In any case, he describes his school as "Rikers Island." While Nas recounts some positive teachers early on, particularly his grade school teacher Ms. Braconi, it seems that Jungle's description of his middle school is probably not too far off from what Nas experienced.
Nas does not point to the official school facilities he was sent to in New York as being actual sources of learning.
They sound more like municipal outgrowths of Queensbridge Houses, which began in the ‘30s as an attempt to improve and provide better housing for working-class families, mainly white, by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and more broadly by President Roosevelt's New Deal, but by Nas’s time, there were basically a space to contain and section off underserved people of color, mainly black.
Though he felt within himself that he might have had talents and been good at art and design, Nas remembers that his time in school did not usually support these feelings but diminished them, leading him to not even care as his grades plummeted. Nas' mother, Fannie Ann Jones, actually had to fight to eventually get him taken out of a school where they wanted to put him in a "slow class," as he recalled in Time Is Illmatic.
Nas' father, Olu Dara, who hails from Natchez, Mississippi, was also deeply hurt by the options for school his children had in New York compared to what he describes as a very nuturing and familial setting down South. He described it as "enrolling them in Hell," as it was clear black kids were not being cared for.
After talking with an assistant principal and math teacher who said his kids shouldn't stay in their current school for their own good, Olu Dara told Nas and Jungle to leave and pursue their livelihoods, something their mother disagreed with.
As I said earlier, Nas' relationship to school was not just negative, but it was certainly not the source of what made him a writer, unlike Shakespeare. Unlike the work of playwrights like Plautus or Terence, MC Shan and Roxanne Shante were not in Nas' class syllabus.
They were however, in Queensbridge, along with Nas and many other current and future DJs and MCs.
When Nas talks about his artistry, he talks about his community being the source of his learning, not school. While communal education existed in its own way in Elizabethan England, the rigorous school system that English boys were given access to in that era was many leaps and bounds beyond what the vast majority of black kids were given access to in New York City in the '70s and '80s, especially those growing up in Queensbridge and other housing projects.
Nas relied on his community, starting with his parents and moving outward. Nas is from a lineage of musicians, most closely Olu Dara, a multi-instrumentalist and player of jazz and the blues.
Olu Dara's father and godfather were members of the “Melodeers” or “Mellowderes,” which may have been a touring gospel quartet or vocal harmony group of sorts. He also expanded Nas and Jungle's knowledge with his own experiences from traveling the world as a musician and spending time in the Navy.
Nas' father introduced him and his brother to various instruments, while his personal library of books introduced them to the works of anyone from J. A. Rogers and Malcolm X to Sun Tzu.
Along with the influence of his parents, Nas received entertainment and an education from watching television and films and listening to records and the radio, all of which show up in the work he would grow up to produce, such as the decision to begin Illmatic with audio from Wild Style (1982), directed by Charlie Ahearn.
Hip-hop exists both in the realm of entertainment and of communal activity. Nas remarks fondly about DJ Hot Day, who was the Queensbridge DJ from his block that would bring his equipment out.
Nas also continuously explains that his identity as a Queensbridge MC is an extension of his admiration for the Juice Crew, while he is of course inspired by countless artists from his childhood that came from beyond his neighborhood as well, such as T La Rock, Whodini, and even Boogie Down Productions.
To contrast his formal education system even further, during the era of Nas' youth in the '80s, hip-hop produced artists who made records but also who were known on various occasions to provide knowledge, or at least an eagerness to seek knowledge. In many cases, hip-hop exposed or got young listeners to pay attention to history they may not have known or weren't getting from school.
If your parents didn't have a book collection like Olu Dara's that exposed you to who Malcolm X was, you could certainly begin to learn something from Keith LeBlanc's "No Sell Out" from 1983.
Four years later, you would learn even more about Malcolm from the Juice Crew All Stars' "Evolution," on which Malcolm X is portrayed by Kool G Rap, as well as Public Enemy's sample of his 1963 "Message to the Grass Roots" at the beginning of "Bring The Noise."
The next year in 1988, hip-hop would again evoke the speech and image of Malcolm X through the cover and title of Boogie Down Production's By All Means Necessary, and in 1989 the Stop the Violence Movement would again sample Malcolm's "Message to the Grass Roots" for the intro to "Self Destruction."
I believe it is safe to say that the work of Ovid was introduced to Shakespeare through grammar school, but for black kids in the '80s, the work and teachings of Malcolm X were not being broadcast the loudest from school, but for many through hip-hop.
As is probably obvious, these references to Malcolm X do not all come from one source, but instead are all enveloped within the community that is hip-hop.
Even with negative experiences in formal education, Nas still became a prolific writer through the influence of hip-hop, which in my opinion, is a significant disctionion to make between him and the Bard of Avon. In this context, the fact that Faith Newman compared Nas to Shakespeare is not a testament to Nas' skills alone, but to the infrastructure of hip-hop, within which he honed said skills.
While Nas may not exactly be Shakespeare, he is certainly the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. He is also Roxanne Shante, MC Shan, KRS-One, Slick Rick, and many, many more.
The point is not that Nas is a genius of the genre, it's that the hip-hop community is genius as a community. It is not genius because of any specific thing that it does or any product it produces, rather it is genius simply because it came into existence in the first place.