" Hardy began studying the violin at the Opus 118 Music School in Harlem, New York at the age of 7, studying under the instruction of Roberta Guaspari, Lynelle Smith, Yonah Zur, and Elizabeth Handman.
During this time, Hardy had numerous performances around the New York City area at locations including Avery Fisher Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, FiddleFest at The Apollo Theater, and Carnegie Hall
where he shared the stage with Joshua Bell, Regina Carter, John Blake, Mark O'Connor, and Itzhak Perlman. "
"November 12, 2019, Nas was honored by Haute Living, along with Watches of Switzerland and Hennessy, in a celebratory affair that included
a violin rendition of iconic Nas songs performed by Edward W. Hardy."
"About.com ranked him 1st on their list of the "50 Greatest MCs of All Time" in 2014, and a year later, Nas was featured on the "10 Best Rappers of All Time" list by Billboard.
The Source ranked him No. 2 on their list of the Top 50 Lyricists of All Time.
In 2013, Nas was ranked fourth on MTV's "Hottest MCs in the Game" list.
His debut, Illmatic, is widely considered among the greatest hip-hop albums of all time."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nas
"Nas's flow as "effervescent", Rah Digga says Nas's lyrics have "intricacy",
Bootie Brown of The Pharcyde explains that Nas does not always have to make words rhyme as he is "charismatic",and Nas is also described as having a "densely packed"
flow, with compound rhymes that "run over from one beat into the next or even into another bar".
"Nas is perhaps contemporary rap's greatest innovator in storytelling.
His catalog includes songs narrated before birth ('Fetus') and after death ('Amongst Kings'), biographies ('UBR [Unauthorized Biography of Rakim]') and autobiographies ('Doo Rags'), allegorical tales ('Money Is My Bitch') and epistolary ones ('One Love'), he's rapped in the voice of a woman ('Sekou Story') and even of a gun ('I Gave You Power')."
Robert Christgau writes that "Nas has been transfiguring [gangsta rap] since Illmatic"
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"Genius first started as a crowdsourced hip-hop focused lyric site, and was originally named Rap Exegesis.
The site changed its name to Rap Genius in December 2009 because "exegesis" was difficult for users to spell."
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Google search penalty
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"In December 2013, Google penalized Rap Genius for violating their backlinks guidelines,—particularly involvement with blog networks—by removing them from its top search results.
Even with the search query "rap genius", results from rapgenius.com did not appear in the top results.
Instead, the top results showed Rap Genius' Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia pages, as well as
news related to the penalty.
This happened after blogger and Rap Genius contributor John Marbach exposed its link scheme to manipulate Google search results by offering Tweets or Facebook shares in exchange for linking to Rap Genius with keyword rich texts.
Rap Genius posted an apology, promising to stop and reverse the practice.
Rap Genius also pointed out that its competitors were participating in similar or worse practices, and a
sked Google to look at "the whole lyrics search landscape" and improve its lyric search results"