Just before the end of 2021, Nas and Hit-Boy — who have become quite the dynamic duo lately — surprised fans with their latest collaborative project, Magic. The album was a welcome inclusion to the rap partnership’s growing catalog of collaborative projects, which already included King’s Disease and King’s Disease II. One of the benefits for Nas of working with Hit-Boy was the inclusion of younger voices to Nas’ list of collaborations, which helped to reverse the narrative the rap vet was out-of-touch with contemporary hip-hop.
One of the voices included on Magic is that of ASAP Rocky, who appears on the Max B shout-out track “Wave Gods” along with a thrilling turntable performance from DJ Premier. Today, Nas and Rocky released the song’s video, a love letter to the gritty New York streets from which both men hail. Rather than showing off tourist destinations like Times Square, though, they display the New York they know, from housing projects to crowded subway cars, as both Nas and Rocky portray a variety of characters from the dice rolling residents of the high-rises to the homeless vagrants who populate bus stop benches.
Watch Nas and Hit-Boy’s “Wave Gods” video featuring ASAP Rocky and DJ Premier above.