Early Life
Nas was born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. His father, Olu Dara, is a jazz and blues musician from Mississippi. His mother, Fannie Ann Jones, was a Postal Service worker from North Carolina. He has one sibling, a brother named Jabari Fret who assumes the alias Jungle. As a young child, Nas and his family relocated to the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, Queens. His neighbor, Willy "Ill Will" Graham, influenced Nas's interest in hip hop by playing him records. Nas's parents divorced in 1985, and he dropped out of school in the ninth grade. He educated himself about African culture through the Five Percent Nation, the Nuwaubians, the Bible and the Qur'an.
Read more about this topic: Nas
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“... the ... thing I am proudest of in my whole business life is that I do not take, that I never took in all my life, and never, never! will take, one single penny more than 6% on any loan or any contract.”
—Hetty Green (1834–1916)