Nas

📍Queensbridge Houses, Long Island City, NY 11101, USA

“Nasir Jones was born in Brooklyn in September 1973, the son of the jazz trumpeter Olu Dara and Ann Jones, and spent his first years in Crown Heights, where at about three or four he would play his father's trumpet on the stoop. Then the family moved to the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, Queens, the largest public housing project in the United States, a sprawl of brick buildings beside the East River under the Queensboro Bridge, with Manhattan's skyline across the water. Queensbridge was the home of great hip-hop, from Marley Marl to MC Shan, and Nas grew up surrounded by it; his neighbour Willy Ill Will Graham played him records and encouraged him to rap. He wanted to be a comic book artist, and he filled notebooks with drawings and rhymes. When he was twelve or thirteen, his parents separated, and his mother raised Nas and his brother, Jabari, on her own. He left school after the eighth grade, and educated himself, reading about African history, the Qur'an, the Bible and the teachings of the Five Percent Nation, while the streets of the projects grew more dangerous around him. At about sixteen he met the producer Large Professor, who recorded him on Main Source's Live at the Barbeque in 1991. His debut album, Illmatic, released in 1994, painted a vivid picture of life in Queensbridge and is widely considered one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever made. He has won a Grammy Award, and Harvard created a fellowship in his name. Queensbridge remains proud of its poet, and he often returns home.”

Sources: qchron.com tcm.com Wikipedia: Nas