In a follow-up to the story that recently broke on hip-hop sites all around the web regarding Nas’s track “Surviving the Times” off his upcoming greatest hits album being a direct rip-off of Wordsmith’s “As the Art Fades Away”… HipHopDX.com listened in on a conference call between Nas’s A&R Mike Brinkley and Wordsmith who attempted to work out the rapidly spreading discussion among the industry and fans. The gist of the call basically was that former NBA star Chris Webber produced the track at Nas’s request because the two where discussing movies and the sample came up as an idea that was pursued. The shady thing here is… Webber has a mutual contact and has heard Wordsmith track as far back as May, and likely Webber knew about it long before making the Nas track. Was he forgetful or just decided to rip it off? If you’ve heard the two songs its undeniable that they bare a striking resemblance. The same intro, the same hooking samples, used veritably the same way. I would have serious doubts that this was a coincidence!

Having said that, in a turn of events Wordsmith’s song, although cataloged with ASCAP a year ago, was not cleared in samples. Nas’s camp did however clear them and is still planning to put the song on the greatest hits album. Wordsmith decided to retract his statement about the lifted track and after being accused of using the story as a publicity stunt he basically replied that he would rather back off than be seen trying to catch shine off a controversy. Instead Smith stated that the fans will ultimately make the final decision.

A unified remix with Nas and Wordsmith was mentioned as an idea to help clear the air but was quickly denied by Brinkley.

Transcripts of the conference call along with the full story where it broke can be found HERE.

-Shaun