NAS EBK | Before They Were Famous | The Bronx Drill Sensation

Before becoming the latest in a long line of promising
drill-rappers to emerge from New York City, NAS EBK was born on
July 2nd, 2003 in the Bronx where he grew up around 158th and 3rd
Avenue. Nas began his life as an aspiring basketball player and in
his teenage years, he played for the Eagle Academy school in New
York, winning a championship in his Freshman year. After that first
season, he was recruited by a prep school out in Pennsylvania which
would force him to re-classify as a Freshman yet again.
Unfortunately, only a few months into this new environment, Nas
would find himself in a physical altercation with another student,
leading to his expulsion from the school and the eventual
dissolution of his dream of becoming a professional basketball
player. All things considered, it was a pretty tragic turn of
events because Nas had enough talent to attend a division one
school – instead, the street life would come calling around the age
of 15, throwing his life into chaos and turmoil for the next few
years. During this period of his life, you could find Nas hanging
around the Courtland projects in the Bronx, but he’d eventually
migrate away from that area and post-up in the block known as
SevSide after getting betrayed and robbed by friends from his
former hood. That’s where and when he would meet fellow rapper Kay
Flock, someone who would come to play a huge part in his musical
success. In the years before he started making music, Nas used his
reputation around the hood to build a massive following on social
media and to hear him tell it, he says he already had around 10,000
followers on Instagram well before he ever created his first song.