Claim: Nas admits to selling his soul to the Illuminati in a lost verse from "You're Da Man" on the Stillmatic album.
Rating:
What's True:
- Nas says he drank his own urine and semen on the song
- Urine, semen and other bodily fluids are key ingredients in many Satanic rituals
- This part of the verse was removed from all pressings of the album
- Stillmatic saved Nas's career and remains one of his best selling records
What's False:
- If Nas sold his soul, why can't he sell any albums?
- There's no way to prove Nas is a card-carrying member of any secret society
"At church on my hand was a preacher's bloodTo some, Nas is merely speaking on the indulgences that come with stardom. Others, however, feel Nas is actually describing some sort of Satanic oath he took in order to certify his elite position in the industry. Sure, this sounds kinda crazy, but when you look into some of the rituals described and performed by dudes like Aleister Crowley, you'll quickly learn that things like this are very real.
Swallow dirt from a graveyard in need of love
I vomit blunt residue, I want revenue, dreaming
And pump lead at you devils trying to take my freedom
It drove me crazy the day I drank my own urine, my own semen
With a .9 to my brain,
But wait a sec, give me time to explain..."
Eroto-comatose Lucidity
"Eroto (from the Greek Érōtos = eroticism) - Comatose. Lucidity by sexual desire in a state of unconscious sleep."
"This Thelemic ritual aims to bring the individual into an alteration of consciousness while inducing sexual stimulations and even sometimes consume psychoactive substances, to ultimately communicate with God, a deity or their H.G.A (Holy Guardian Angel). The ritual can be performed with a partner or alone."
"Crowley specifies that the act is highly sacred if it is practiced with a person of the same sex."
"The goal here is [...] to lead them into a state between dream and lucidity, between conscious and unconscious. By this transitory state, suspended in time, the individual is embraced by a hierophany that allows him to communicate with the sacred. "
"The ritual can end in two ways. One is the individual falling asleep in a deep sleep and the second by the orgasm. If the ritualist is a man and ends the ritual with orgasm, semen, as an elixir, should be consumed by him, possibly in a Cake of Light."
Cakes of Light
So Nas is out here eating semen cakes? Say it ain't so, b.
More info from the Thelemic Union:
"The Cake of Light is a cake, often baked in the shape of a cookie, containing several key ingredients: Abramelin oil, honey and body fluids in particular : semen, vaginal lubrication and menstrual blood."
"This ritual takes essence in the concept of the Eucharist. This concept is indicative of the essence of the ritual because the ritualists consume the body of Christ, the sacred body. However, in the context of Thelema, the sacred body is the body’s sexual fluids."
"The consumption of body sexual fluids in a Eucharistic cake of light not only symbolizes the sacredness of these fluids, but it also embodies a conception of the will. Indeed, when the ritualist manifests his will during orgasm, he infuses it into his sexual secretion. From then on, the sperm is impregnated with this will and by the consumption of this fluid, the ritualist participates in an integral manifestation of the will decided during the orgasm."
Semen has mad powers, according to Crowley:
"[Semen can be used to] charge a talisman of a specific intention by applying the female or male sexual fluid, to invoke a deity by the ultimate focus during orgasm (this exemple recalls a causal connection with the sexual ritual of fertilization by the king at Sumer) and even to manifest any material or spiritual desire "Crowley found in these explicit acts of transgression the key to a tremendous source of power. "
"Through these occult manipulations of impure substances, such as semen, blood, and excrement, it is claimed to be unleashed in a magical way that could fulfill any spiritual or material desire" This interpretation of the sexual act as the axial point of the Thelema allowed the adepts to practice this genesic ecstasy through rituals. "
Blood is another key, powerful ingredient. In the first line of the verse, Nas mentions the blood of a preacher. To Crowley, this is some of "best" blood to use during a ritual:
“The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what.” (The Book of the Law, 1904)
Sadly, this is also sounding a lot like Marina Abromovic's "Spirit Cooking," where a bunch of demons get together to consume human flesh and bodily fluids in ritualistic fashion. The recipe for a Spirit Cooking "dinner" calls for "fresh morning urine - sprinkle over nightmare dreams" and "fresh sperm milk - drink on earthquake nights".
After the first part of the verse, Nas continues:
"But wait a sec, give me time to explain...
Women and fast cars and diamond rings can poison a rap star
Suicidal, high, smoking so much lye
I saw a dead bird flying through a broken sky"
Here, he openly admits why he did it. Is he also describing the visions and hallucinations he saw during his peak moments of eroto-comatose lucidity?
The rest of the verse gets even spookier:
"Sex with death, indulge in these women
Vision my own skeleton swimming in eternal fire
Broads play with pentagrams in they vagina
Like the Exorcist, then they gave birth to my seeds
I beg for God's help, why they love hurting me?"
".45 on my waist, staring at my reflection
In the mirror, sitting still in the chair like Mike Concepcion
When everything around me got cloudy
The chair became a king's throne, my destiny found me
It was clear why the struggle was so painful
Metamorphosis, this is what I changed to
And God, I'm so thankful"
Fittingly, the verse ends with Nas mentioning a metamorphosis. This is what many rituals or magickal acts are attempting - to transform a person or object into something greater. He does thank God at the end, though, not Satan.
Analysis
Nas is into some weird shit. He once came inside Kelis without a condom. That being said, I just don't see him as a Satanist or one of the rappers who sold their soul. He made a living from rapping about what those around him did - so I always interpreted this verse as metaphorical/allegorical rather than something he literally did.
However, the "confession" part of the verse was removed from the album. Someone didn't want that part on there, and it wasn't Nas. Perhaps an industry executive who was aware of these rituals heard it and ordered it to be deleted. A simpler explanation might just be that it's an incredibly bizarre thing for a street rapper to be talking about on a song. Earlier in the album, Nas spent several minutes calling Jay-Z gay, then a few songs later is talking about slurping up his own semen.
For all the real evidence you need, just look at Nas's history of album sales. Before Stillmatic, he was struggling. Sure, the album was indeed a return to form and remains one of his highest selling albums... but after that, it's pretty much a steady decline. If dude really sold his soul, his sales better look a lot better than this shit:
As always, the truth here is likely somewhere in the middle. Throughout his career, Nas has consistently used his music to reveal hidden truths about himself and admit his mistakes. Perhaps this lost verse really was a confession, and maybe Nas really did dabble in some weird shit to establish himself in the game - but if he did, I think at some point after this, he gave it up and went on a different path.
On King's Disease, released earlier this year, he says:
"Amazing Grace, I'm gracefully aging/Without masonry I made more paper to play with."
So what do you think? Was Nas just high as fuck rapping about weird shit? Or did he actually partake in a secret blood oath and later confess it on a song? Or was he maybe just describing something he saw others do? If Nas didn't sell his soul, are there other rappers who did?
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