Nas’ Life is Good, dropped today, and the theme of the album is Nasty Nas maturing and finally moving on after his publicized divorce with singer Kelis. The cover art features the emcee with a part of Kelis’ actual wedding dress, which was apparently the only thing she left behind in their house after the divorce.
During his media tour promoting his new LP Nas had an interview with Funkmaster Flex, and the topic of how Nas’ ex-wife responded to the cover art came up. At first when he broke the news to her that he used her wedding dress she thought it was a stab, but the veteran rapper explained to her that they have both grown past the anger of the past, and he simply was using the dress to express himself.
“At first, she was like, are you dissing me? I was like, come on man, we grown. There was a time when it was turmoil but I'm not trying to play you and just showing what people know. They know we split. The divorce was public, people knew about it,” the New York rapper said.
With Nas finally moving on emotionally, he now feels that others were too hard on Kelis after their separation, and regrets some of the decisions he made immediately following the divorce.
"Honey's a good girl and she just caught a bad rap in the whole thing...I love people that ride with me, because people had to split sides... But at the end of the day, I think they were too harsh.”
Nas is happy now that they’ve both moved on, "[I]t's in a better place. It took a while to get there. Of course, you only see what the media put out there. We had some of the biggest divorce lawyers in L.A. It shouldn't have happened like that. We didn't know any better... you're dealing with divorce sometimes and there's a lot of anger and hurt, you don't want to hear what the next person is saying. You just think that person is trying to take you down, so you go and get the best representation you can get. What we realized later, we didn't have to go at it like that. We in a much better place, thank God. We're in a much better place."
Life is Good is definitely reflective of Nas’ state of mind these days, as the album is filled with introspective lyrics. The album is in stores now, and you can stream it here.
(Shout outs to HipHopDX on the story).