Nas attends Levi's x NAS Tee Collection Launch Event on November 07, 2025 in New York City.
DJ Premier attends Ghostface Supreme Clientele 2 Album Release Event on August 22, 2025 in New York City.
Key Takeaways
- Light-Years includes a guest appearance from AZ and concludes Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It series.
- Nas and DJ Premier revisit their creative chemistry from Illmatic with new material that nods to past classics.
- The project reflects a decades-long collaboration that helped shape the sound of East Coast Hip Hop.
Nas and DJ Premier finally did what Hip Hop fans have been waiting on for decades. The duo dropped Light-Years today (Dec. 12), marking their first full collaborative album and a milestone moment in rap’s long memory. The project arrives through Nas’ record label, Mass Appeal.
The album feels like a return to one of rap’s most enduring partnerships — the kind that shaped entire generations of production and penwork. Nas and Premier first linked on 1994’s Illmatic, building a creative chemistry that gave us “Nas Is Like,” “I Gave You Power,” “2nd Childhood,” and “N.Y. State of Mind Pt. II.” Light-Years pushes that legacy forward with 15 new tracks and one guest feature: AZ, a fixture in Nas’ universe since the ’90s.
The tracklist includes “My Life Is Real,” “Pause Tapes,” “Sons (Young Kings),” “It’s Time,” “Junkie,” and “3rd Childhood,” a title that nods directly to their earlier work. Preem announced the album date onstage in the U.K. last month, while Nas revealed the title on Instagram shortly after.
Light-Years also serves as the final installment in Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It series, which has already delivered new releases from icons like Slick Rick, Mobb Deep, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Big L, and De La Soul. For Nas and Preem, ending the run makes sense — their collaborative catalog is woven into the DNA of Hip Hop itself.
Nas reflects on Hip Hop’s state, citing Kendrick Lamar and Clipse
As previously reported by REVOLT, Nas recently revisited his long-discussed “Hip Hop is dead” declaration. In an interview, he explained, “I used to say [that] Hip Hop is dead. It is kind of dead, but we have to think about it, in a sense, like that. Because if you think about it, this year is really incredible. I mean, Kendrick’s been on a roll, Clipse [is] cooking, [there’s the] Legend Has It [series], Mass Appeal.”
For Nas, the culture isn’t gone — it’s shifting, expanding, and finding its pulse in both the veterans and the voices rising behind them. Listen to Light-Years below: