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“One Love” was the final single released from “Illmatic“. Fellow Queens native Q-Tip provided the vibes from the Heath Brothers' “Smilin' Billy Suite Part II” as the backdrop for Nas' song which finds him reading letters he wrote to his incarcerated friends about what was happening in the neighborhood.
Producer Large Professor provided some background information on how this track came together:
" was like, “Yo, you think Q-Tip would give me a beat?” That’s really when I was gettin' up with Tip a lot, so I was like, “Yo, of course. Just roll through with me out to Jamaica one time, and we’ll just sit down.” And we did. We rolled out there, back when Tip had all the stuff in Phife’s grandmother’s basement. And we sat down, and Tip was like, “Oh word? I don’t really have no beats done right now. But I'ma show you the record I'ma use for you.” And he played this record , and it was just like, “Oh shit! That shit is crazy!” He hooked it up and did his thing, and it was on."
The third verse of this song was the basis of a scene in the movie "Belly", starring Nas and DMX.
This shifting of perspective in his verses is one of Nas’s iconic techniques, as Adam Bradley notes:
"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 ’) 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’)."
Nas' storytelling abilities stem from none other than Slick Rick. The last verse is almost reminiscent of Slick Rick’s ‘'Children’s Story’‘ as Nas tells a young child about the life of crime.
Q-Tip told this to XXL about the song:
"Just from when you heard Nas initially, you knew he was ill. When I first heard him rhyme, I knew he was ill. Everybody knew he was ill. But I told Faith, “You guys got somebody special.” Because he has vulnerability in his rhymes. A lot of niggas who MC, you don’t hear the vulnerability. He keeps it relatable, but he has a lot of depth. He can keep it gangsta, he can keep it educated, he can keep it thoughtful. He can tell you that he’s the shit, & he can tell you when he fucks up. And that’s what makes Nas endearing to everybody."
A good guess is that Q-Tip isn’t marked as a featured artist because he only does the hook. If he’d had a rap verse, that might have warranted it back then. Being marked as a “featured” artist was about helping market to people. His name recognition alone probably wasn’t just wasn’t enough in 1994.
Feature credits weren’t prominently displayed on the cover art back then unless it was a huge artist. They’d probably be buried somewhere in the credits, like Q-Tip’s showstealing verse on Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is In The Heart.”
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