MC Serch Is Selling His Portion of Nas' Early Catalog

MC Serch, founding member of 3rd Bass is reportedly selling 100 percent of his holdings in Nas' legendary catalog, including Illmatic.

MC Serch is giving up his holdings of Nas' catalog. The former 3rd Bass member was executive producer of the Queensbridge rapper's early albums Illmatic and It Was Written. With his companies Serchlite Publishing and Serchlite Music, MC Serch, whose real name is Michael Berrin, has held executive producer rights to Illmatic and It Was Written for 27 years.

“I have decided to sell all of the rights, including the global rights,” Serch told AllHipHop. “I started conversations with several companies a few months ago. For 27 years, it has provided my family through good times and bad. Now it’s time for a new chapter.”

Serch was last part of controversial music website HitPiece, a music website that caused controversy after a beta experiment in which NFTs were posted its site. No music was ever used in the beta experiment. In August, Hitpiece relaunched as “the easiest place to buy authentic music artist NFTs" in partnership with music rights identification company Audible Magic.

Nas' 1994 debut album Illmatic has long been heralded as his greatest work, as the album is registered in the Library of Congress along with A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory; Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers); Dr. Dre's The Chronic; Jay-Z's The Blueprint and more. To celebrate their legendary careers, Nas and Wu-Tang Clan embarked on their NY State of Mind Tour in late-August, which concluded earlier this month.

Nas' sophomore album It Was Written was released in 1996, becoming the rapper's highest-selling album. His Lauryn Hill-featured single "If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)" became his first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

This article was updated on Wednesday, October 20.