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Nas Performs In Brisbane

Source: Mark Grimwade / Getty

Nas and Kanye West are up for question after the underground hip hop community noticed striking similarities with another artist.

It’s no secret Nasir was one of the five major releases from the Kanye-produced albums this summer. One of the major standouts from the release was the album cover, which featured four little Black boys, some of which were holding guns. The production was also interesting with songs like “Adam and Eve” being one of the standout tracks.

Ironically, both the cover and the song are speculated to have been taken from a Bay Area producer named The Architect.

Last October, he released a mixtape featuring remixes of Nas songs called The Architect x Nasty Nas (Remixes). One track off the project, “No Ideas Original,” features a sample of a 1974 song called “Gol-e Yakh” by Kourosh Yaghmaei. The Architect’s loop is pretty much the same as the one Kanye used for “Adam and Eve.” Peep the similarities below!

 

 

 

As for the album cover, the picture of the Black boys lined up was taken by journalist Mary Ellen Mark. Nas used it for Nasir and tweeted the image out the day of his album release party.

However, a few days before, The Architect released an album with rapper Nowaah the Flood called Trill Life Mathematiks and it used the exact same album cover given a few edits. Evidence below!

 

Interesting…

In an interview with Complex, The Architect didn’t seem too outraged by the similarities, but he definitely had questions.

“First of all, I like to think great minds think alike,” he said. “Second of all, it’s very odd when lightning strikes in the same place two to three times. Keep in mind they were noticing [Nowaah the Flood] on Mass Appeal. He was being featured on there a lot. They know about him because he has been around for a while.”

The Architect continued, “But with that said, I’m fully aware that a lot of the material that we use nowadays as far as on the underground is sample-based. Obviously, I don’t own the samples, so I wasn’t going to say anything about it….this is a new era of music where things like that can happen. We all have access to the Internet with the picture and the record, I guess. I don’t know. I obviously don’t know Nas and I don’t know Kanye West. I don’t know if they have a team working on this stuff. I hate to go around accusing people of stuff. I kind of let the public run with that, you know what I mean?”

 

Well it seems we’ll have to just leave it at that.

What do you think of the similar covers and song beats? Let us know if you’re staying woke or nah on Twitter and Facebook!

Conspiracy Talk: Did Nas & Kanye Steal A Beat And Album Cover From This Bay Area Producer?  was originally published on globalgrind.com