Hip-hop was born in the Bronx in 1973, and 53 years later the city’s mayor wants to make sure it doesn’t just live in the history books. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani sat down with Nas on Wednesday (Sept. 30) for a short documentary on the state of the genre in the city, and the question he kept coming back to was housing.
“We can’t be content with New York City simply being the birthplace of hip-hop,” Mamdani told Billboard, which premiered it exclusively. “We want it to still be its home, and that means ensuring that the artists who create here are actually able to live here.” The mayor, who once rapped under the name Mr. Cardamom, tied the city’s cultural future to its affordability. “If we allow New York to become such an expensive city that art becomes a luxury good,” he said, “then we are depriving future generations from the magic of art.”
The conversation took place at a park near the Queensbridge Houses, where Nas grew up. Dressed in a vintage Mets Darryl Strawberry jersey, he described hip-hop as a kind of reporting. “Hip-hop unveils the truth. Hip-hop tells you exactly what your city looks like, sounds like, feels like,” Nas says in the film. “It was an outcry from people who demanded things to change and to tell the world what we were going through.”
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Mamdani is an open fan. XXL reports he has called Nas one of his top five rappers of all time. The documentary arrives with the city already betting on the idea: the Bronx School of Hip-Hop, a public high school in the Claremont section of the Bronx, opened in early September and uses hip-hop culture as the way into math, science, history and literature.
It's surreal that New York City Mayor's Office, the chancellor's office, this is their school. They said, we are going to back this.
Jason Reyes, founding principal, Bronx School of Hip-Hop, XXL
The school is part of a broader rollout of five new public schools across the Bronx and western Queens, including arts, STEM and disability-focused programs, Complex notes. Whether the city can keep artists from being priced out is a policy question rather than a creative one, and the film doesn’t pretend to settle it. Nas, who earlier in September had to move his Riot Fest set up for storms, frames the goal as showing the next generation a path to staying.
Mamdani closes by encouraging young New Yorkers “to keep writing, to keep creating,” and by calling on the city to remain “forever hungry,” per HotNewHipHop. Nas agrees: “That’s what it’s all about.” It is also a city making cultural moves of other kinds. The mayor’s Key to the City, handed to Knicks star Jalen Brunson, turned up in the promo for Brunson’s SNL hosting debut days earlier.
Mamdani closes by encouraging young New Yorkers “to keep writing, to keep creating,” and by calling on the city to remain “forever hungry,” per HotNewHipHop. Nas agrees: “That’s what it’s all about.”
- Film
- Short documentary, premiered Sept. 30, 2026
- Location
- Near the Queensbridge Houses, Queens
- School
- Bronx School of Hip-Hop, Claremont, opened early September
- Mayor
- Zohran Mamdani
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
