Last night In London, UK to promote their upcoming Distant Relatives world tour, Nas and Damien Marley talked upcoming projects on Tim Westwood’s Radio One rap show. While Marley’s future pivots around his father’s estate and starring as him in his 2011 Hollywood biography, Nas announced he’s already in the lab working on the follow-up to his collabo with Marley, currently titled Illmatic 2:

“It’s about a legacy. I’ve been in this game 20 years and feel like everything is full circle. The anticipation, the music, the baby mama drama…. I just want New York to be back where it belongs.”

Nas wouldn’t go into details pertaining to his ongoing child support court battles with estranged wife Kelis, but agreed to divulge some tidbits on how far along he is with his album’s recording:

“We’re like… 6 or 7 joints in and it’s perfect man, it’s perfect. I haven’t felt this good about an album since Stillmatic. I played some of it for Jadakiss and Fat Joe last week and they was buggin’, they was off the wall. [...] If we gonna come back, we need to come back hard. It was almost like I forgot what I came from when I moved down to Atlanta, so me and Jungle, the whole Bravehearts, we moved back to a crib right by 41st in Queensbridge. I felt like it was 1994 all over again.”

Anxious to complete the album before the tour leaves the US in June, Nas has already enlisted the mixing services of Mike Dean and close friend LES. He hopes to cut the final tracklist down to “around 15,” including an intro with Chris Stein and Grandwizard Theodore. When asked about his debut’s place in history:

“People have always told me it was too short, so we’re gonna throw some old tracks on there that we didn’t use the first time around. I got this one track “Deja Vu” man. I’m gonna re-record it and put it on there. Another one is “Understanding,” cause heads need to understand there’s a history to this you know what I’m sayin’? I talked with LA Reid, I spoke with my mans Damien, Raekwon, Jay Electronica and everybody was behind it. Everybody. I feel like Rae was on-point with his, so I gotta rise to that you know?

Production has already been slated to exclusively feature Q-Tip, DJ Premier, Large Pro, Pete Rock and LES with a sole guest appearance by AZ. A rep from Def Jam has yet to confirm the release, but an unlinked page on their website does mention an unnamed upcoming Nas solo album. Information is still coming in, however a tentative release date of August 2nd has been forecast to coincide with the tri-state finale of the Distant Relatives tour. Updates will be posted as the story develops.

— Snoop Bloggy Blogg