Nas honours Rakim at Hip Hop Grandmaster Award

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At the 2023 Grandmaster award ceremony which held recently in Las Vegas last weekend, famous American rapper, Nas has again paid due respect to a legend in the culture.

At the event, Nas reportedly paid homage to the legendary Rakim, a famous rapper who is also of the American origin. Nas is known for always giving the legends their just due.

The rapper reportedly did same for a few more legends at the event which kicked off with the “King’s Disease” rapper reciting lyrics from “Paid in Full,” before paying tribute to the Long Island native and Hip Hop pioneer.

“That verse — that song, ‘Paid In Full’ — said, ‘I can think it,’” he began. “Because of you, my brother, I made it,” he said directly to Rakim. “Because of Doug E. Fresh, Flavor Flav, I gotta shout out all my heroes.”

Also at the event, Nas paid tribute to Scarface before continuing: “Because of y’all, I made it. And I’m forever in debt to y’all.”

The event honored Rakim and Scarface as the inaugural recipients of a big grant from the “Paid In Full Foundation.” The two rappers were honored at the foundation’s Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards in Las Vegas last weekend.

Also, the event was thrown by Nas, as well as Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, and Ben’s wife Felicia.

This is not Horowitz’s first venture into Hip Hop. He was an early investor in the lyric annotation site Genius (then known as Rap Genius) and has been friends with Nas for many years.

The news of the Grandmaster Awards was first revealed by Steve Stoute on the latest episode of the Rap Radar podcast.

“Myself, Ben Horowitz, Fab 5 Freddy, QD3, Felicia Horowitz, Ben’s wife — we have a fund, a charity called Paid In Full. And on November 17, we are honoring those who have led the culture but have not received the financial rewards that are on par with their cultural contribution.

“And we’re giving significant money, a half a million dollars, and health care, to these people who we believe were contributors who didn’t get what they deserved.”

More information has been shared on the foundation’s website: “Unfortunately, many of the most impactful original [Hip Hop] artists never received recognition proportional with their exceptional contributions to arts and culture.

“The Paid in Full Foundation aims to rectify that through its grantmaking program, by both honoring the people who built Hip Hop and enabling them to pursue their creative and intellectual pursuits for the benefit of society.”