Nas recently took to Instagram to wish Large Professor and DJ Premier a happy birthday, thanking both Illmatic producers for playing integral mentor-ship roles early on in his career. Nas then reflected on meeting Large Professor when he was only 17 years old, saying Large Pro showed him how to properly lay vocals and helped him learn to structure songs.
During a newly-released interview with VladTV, Large Professor discussed how he first crossed paths with Nas through Joe Fatal. The three collaborating on Main Source’s iconic track, “Live At The Barbeque.” The song, which also introduced Akinyele, appeared on the album Breaking Atoms, doubled as Nas’ first-ever appearance on wax.
“Joe Fatal was like the street, the connect, you know what I’m saying. He’s Uptown, Downtown, all around, you know kind of thing,” Large reflected at the 2:00 mark. “Me and Joe Fatal are like childhood friends, like five years old type-sh*t in Flushing, so he moved away and then when he came back, he was this Long Island City, Queensbridge dude now. Like yo, man, I be out in Queensbridge, I got [Tragedy Khadafi], I’ma bring Trag’ through. It was like ‘Word you make beats? Aight, aight.’ He click-clacked everything with me and Nas.”
After touching on how Joe Fatal (who also raps on “Live At The Barbeque”) initially introduced him to Nas, the conversation shifted to the nature of their early collaborations and the material they worked on at the beginning of their now-decades long friendship.
“Fatal was like, we’re going to record a demo, so we went to Coney Island and they came and picked me up from school. I was bringing the drum machine to school type-sh*t. So it was like we’re going to meet up after and go. We had tons of demos.”
Vlad then asks if the 1991 Main Source collaboration was the first Nas-Large Professor link. “We had mad demos; we had tons of demos. We had ‘550 Fahrenheit,’ ‘Top Choice Of The Female Persuasion,’ we had mad demos, during the Eric B. & Rakim time. It was a few of them. Shout out to my man G-Wiz, Ill Will, all of them—Jungle used to be there. He used to be sitting in the studio, early-ass in the morning. Definitely.” When Rakim or Eric did not show to the studio, Large Professor worked with Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, Akinyele, Nas, and others putting down tracks.
Vlad asks what happened to these tapes. “They are somewhere out there,” Large Professor says. “That’s the crazy thing about it. I think Nas has the tapes. I think once the bread was good, he was like, ‘Yo, I secured them tapes.’ I remember him telling me that one time. They are somewhere out in the world.”
Checkout the full interview.
