New York giants Wu-Tang Clan and Nas are hitting the road together in 2022. On Tuesday (April 19), the Staten Island crew and Queensbridge rapper announced the co-headlining N.Y. State of Mind Tour, which will take them across North America later this year.
Named after Nas’ classic Illmatic track, the 25-city trek kicks off in St. Louis, Missouri on August 30 and wraps up in Los Angeles, California on October 4, with stops in cities such as Toronto, Atlanta and Houston along the way.
Curiously, there is currently no New York date scheduled, but there are two stops in nearby New Jersey — one at the Waterfront Music Pavilion in Camden on September 8 and another at Newark’s Prudential Center on September 13.
Tickets for the tour go on sale on April 26 at 10 a.m. local time via Live Nation.
Of course, Wu-Tang Clan and Nas are no strangers to sharing the mic. Nas appeared on Raekwon’s “Verbal Intercourse” and “Rich & Black,” as well as “Let My N-ggas Live” from Wu-Tang’s 2000 album The W. They even performed together at Rock the Bells festival in 2010.
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Nas and the Wu’s history goes back even further. In a clip from Wu-Tang Clan’s 2019 Showtime documentary series Of Mics and Men, the Queensbridge native recalled meeting RZA and co. when he was a teenager during their respective rises to rap stardom.
“I had met RZA when he was a solo artist and when I was hearing about Wu-Tang, I kept hearing about these dudes, they were coming to places, tearing shit up everywhere they went,” he said. “I remember being around Wu and I’m like, ‘Damn, they just like us.’
“It was like cousins, almost. It was like, you know, project kids. We felt it, we smelt it off each other, and it just shows you that out of those housing projects come some brilliant people.”
The tour announcement comes after Nas‘ recent success with multi-platinum producer Hit-Boy. Last year, God’s Son won his first ever Grammy Award when King’s Disease took home Best Rap Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards.
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The duo reconnected for King’s Disease II — which also earned a Grammy nomination — last August before dropping the surprise eight-song project Magic in December. A third King’s Disease installment is in the works.
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Meanwhile, Wu-Tang Clan’s last album The Saga Continues arrived in 2017. However, the group’s legacy has enjoyed a new lease on life thanks to the award-winning Hulu drama series Wu-Tang: An American Saga, which portrays their rise to fame.
While seeing the Wu together as a cohesive unit is a rare occasion these days, the crew continues to see success individually. Method Man recently won an NAACP Image Award for his role in 50 Cent‘s Power Book II: Ghost, while RZA — who remains a prolific director and actor — returned with Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater alongside DJ Scratch in March.
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Ghostface Killah is currently prepping the long-awaited sequel to 2000’s Supreme Clientele with help from Kanye West and Mike Dean, while Raekwon is working on a third installment in his iconic Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… series.
