Hip-pop and rap veteran, Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones popularly known as Nas shocked the music world after he won his first-ever Grammy award for best rap album on Sunday night.

Nas rose to stardom in the early 1990\s with his masterpiece album Illmatic which featured hip-pop heavyweight producers such as DJ Premier and LES and was acclaimed as the best album of 1994 by The Source.

The 13th studio album, King’s Disease which was released in August of 2020 debuted at number five on the US Billboard 200 with 47,000 album-equivalent units, featured Big Sean, Lil Durk, and Don Toliver.

King’s Disease beat stiff competitions from strong contenders such as D Smoke (Black Habits), Jay Electronica (A Written Testimony), Freddie Gibbs and the Alchemist (Alfredo), and Royce 5’9″ (The Allegory) to clinch the sole prize.

Nas had previously been nominated for the rap category 14 times with his first nomination coming in 1996 for his collaboration with Lauryn Hill for If I Ruled the World (Imagine That).