Nas

Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones (born September 14, 1973), better known as Nas, is an American rapper, songwriter, actor and entrepreneur. About.com ranked "Illmatic" as the greatest hip hop album of all time. 

Nas was born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. His father, Olu Dara (born Charles Jones III), is a jazz and blues musician from Natchez, Mississippi. His mother, Fannie Ann Jones, was a Postal Service worker from North Carolina.

notes

From "Rapper Nas makes history on Tuesday’s episode of “Finding Your Roots.” posted 27 October 2014

“We introduced Nas to five generations – we’ve never been able to do this before for any African American – five generations of his enslaved ancestors,” host Henry Louis Gates told the TCA in July. “And we showed him an extremely rare document, something we’d never seen before, an actual 1859 bill of sale for his 3rd great grandmother whose name was Pocahontas Little.”

Links

• official site, Wikipedia, AllMusic, imdb, "Time is Illmatic" YouTube trailer rapdict
• Col. Benjamin Franklin Little, owner of the Carlisle Plantation