Prince Turned Down The Opportunity To Work With Nas

Nas has revealed that Prince turned down a proposed collaboration with him in the late ’90s — because the rapper didn’t own his own master recordings.

“I sought him because he came to my ‘I Am . . .’ release party,” Nas said on Revolt TV’s “Drink Champs.” “I said, ‘Yo, look, man, let’s do this. Let’s do this song.’ And he was like, ‘Do you own your masters?’ But he blew my s–t because I was like, ‘I don’t. And I’m far from it, because I owe this label like four, five albums’ . . . I was like, ‘Damn.’ ”

But the Queens native said he left the party with a valuable lesson: Prince “dropped a jewel — he kind of helped me see the future, and he was like, ‘When you own your masters, give me a ring.’ ”

Either way, “we kicked it a few times. We got cool. He was seriously a very cool dude to me. He invited me onstage to perform.”

Nas recalled, “I think everybody wanted to work with him . . . He turned Michael Jackson down! The pressure he had from people who wanted to work with him was crazy.”

Nas is currently on tour with Mary J. Blige.

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