Nas has said he no longer looks to rappers his own age to keep him inspired in the booth. The 49-year-old rap legend was a special guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday (February 22), and he was asked which artists keep him on his toes. youtube.com/... As Nasty Nas explained, he isn’t motivated by his fellow Hip Hop veterans due to the simple fact that many of them are no longer active. “I’m really trying to figure out what my next move is, and I feel like a lot of Hip Hop artists my age are not putting out a lot of material, so I can’t look to them as reference,” Nas said. “They kind of slowed down — for whatever reasons, I understand it’s a tough thing — but I got bit by the bug, man.” While many MCs from his generation have slowed down or fizzled out, Nas has breathed new life into his already legendary career in recent years thanks to his collaborative partnership with Hit-Boy, with whom he’s released four projects in three years — one of which won Esco his first ever Grammy. “I collaborated with this cat Hit-Boy who’s like the best, and he’s produced all of those albums — King’s Disease 1, 2, 3. We’re kind of inspiring ourselves at this point. It’s really interesting.” Colbert asked Nas what he sees in Hit-Boy that he’s missing in himself, and he jokingly replied: “youth.” He also described him and the multi-platinum producer as a “perfect match.”