dead prez's stic.man Elaborates On Ghostwriting For Nas, Denies Accusations

by Steven J. Horowitz

stic.man addresses allegations that dead prez ghostwrote songs for Nas' "Untitled" album.

Earlier this week, journalist Dream Hampton took to Twitter to say that Jay Electronica and dead prez's stic.man ghostwrote songs for Nas' 2008 album Untitled, which both rappers later denied.
During an interview with VIBE.com, stic.man elaborated on comments he had previously made on his Facebook page, stating that only those in the studio would know how the records were created.
"At the end of the day, I just feel like the people who are saying different things about the process of how that record was created I’m wondering, where were you at?" he said. "To be totally honest, me and M1 went to Cali at the request of Nas. And we would be in the studio together working on stuff with nobody else there except Nas, who would come in and leave. I think people are making assumptions because of the content of the record. It’s gone from the collaboration that we did with Nas, which involved producing, idea exchanging and writing hooks, which is one thing, to us being ghostwriters."
He clarified what he considers as ghostwriting, stating that he never actually wrote words that Nas would later say on the record. stic.man went in depth about how the connection was made between dead prez and Esco, stating that they were brought out to L.A. to help develop ideas.
"To me, ghostwriting, as far as I know, is hiring somebody to write words for you to actually say. That didn’t happen. The way we got hired for Nas’ project wasn’t clear up front. M1 was in L.A. before I came to L.A. and he was like, 'Nas wants to bring you out here to work on this project.' I remembered thinking we were just going to do a song together. But I later found out we were there to work in general: production, writing and ideas to help develop some of the songs on the album. So of course I’m thinking, 'It’s called the Nigger album so that means you want dead prez type songs together, right?' But it was revealed to me that Nas wasn’t looking for that. He didn’t want us to rap. He wanted help with beats and concepts. And that surprised me because I’m thinking, 'You want beats??? Of all the people to make beats for, you want us to make beats?” I was like, 'Wow.'"