After recently announcing the intended title of his upcoming album, Nas' recording home, Def Jam is reportedly denying the album will be called N*gga.
Nas announced his album will be called N*gga this past Friday (October 12) during a concert in New York. He said the disc would be released in December. But according to Fox News, neither will the highly anticipated album be dropped in December nor is it likely to carry the controversial title.
"There is no album released by Nas on the release schedule at this point," a source close to Island Def Jam Music Group chairman Antonio "L.A." Reid told FOX. "And they would be unlikely to release an album with that title. How would that look at Wal-Mart?"
The Queensbridge-MC also reportedly told fans at the performance that he actually wanted to call his last record N*gga, but Def Jam wouldn't allow it, and made him change the name to Hip Hop Is Dead.
The backlash towards Nas' announcement concerning the album's title has already began, with the Reverend Jesse Jackson speaking out against the rapper's desired title choice.
"The title using the 'N' word is morally offensive and socially distasteful," Jackson said in a statement. "Nas has the right to degrade and denigrate in the name of free speech, but there is no honor in it. Radio and television stations have no obligation to play it and self-respecting people have no obligation to buy it. I wish he would use his talents to lift up and inspire, not degrade, making a mockery of racism."
The NAACP also had words to offer concerning the album title, claiming that the idea showed a lack of creativity and was only reinforcing the word.
"We will not support and we will not continually be assailed by other individuals who want to use that type of term in our presence," said national NAACP spokesman Richard McIntire. "This has gone on long enough."
"The NAACP believes in free speech. We are not a censorship organization," said Vic Bulluck, executive director of the organization's Hollywood bureau. "But we think [the N-word] is pejorative, no matter who uses it , even if it's to sell records. It shows a real lack of creative imagination."
Even Don Imus' camp offered it's two cents, possibly capitalizing off the shock jock's anticipated return to the airwaves in December. Unlike Jackson and the NAACP, Imus' lawyer reportedly approved of the rapper's request..
"It's a good thing," Martin Garbus wrote in an e-mail to FOX. "Words like that should be deprived of their meanings, and then they can't hurt."