Nas

“I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death / Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined.”

At twenty years old, Nas released Illmatic and set the literary gold standard for hip-hop songwriting. Capable of rapping backwards ('Rewind'), writing from the perspective of a gun ('I Gave You Power'), or sustaining a thirty-year run with Hit-Boy, his pen blends street journalism with high poetry.