Two Nas stories in one week, both about who owns hip-hop's history and who teaches it.
## Beat Street, the musical Per Deadline via XXL, Nas has assembled the creative team to turn the 1984 film into a Broadway musical: Schele Williams, who directed The Wiz revival, will direct; Kristoffer Diaz, who wrote the book for the Tony-nominated, Grammy-winning Hell's Kitchen, writes this one; Jason Michael Webb handles music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations. The team ran a 29-hour workshop in August. Producers are Richard Fearn, Arthur Baker, Michael Holman and Peter Bittenbender with Mass Appeal, the company Nas co-founded. Baker and Holman produced the original movie. Nas has been attached since 2024: "Beat Street wasn't just a film – it spread the revolution of hip-hop culture throughout the country and the world."
## Why Beat Street Harry Belafonte produced it, Stan Lathan directed it, and the cameos are the founding roster: Kool Herc, Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, Doug E. Fresh, Treacherous Three, Melle Mel on the title track. The Roxy battle scene is the one every B-boy documentary still cuts to. Hamilton proved Broadway would pay for hip-hop's vocabulary. This is hip-hop bringing its own IP to the stage, with its own producers on the sheet.
## The Bronx school On Wednesday, Sept. 30, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office posted a short documentary of the mayor and Nas visiting the Bronx School of Hip-Hop, a new public high school in Claremont that opened in September and uses the culture to teach math, science, history and literature, per XXL. Mamdani: "We can't be content with having been the birthplace of hip-hop. We wanted to still be the home." Founding principal Jason Reyes: "It validates that our culture is great and that our culture means something." Nas: "It's all about the youth and how do we get them to avoid the mistakes that so many people made."
## The read Mass Appeal already runs the catalog business (Hip Hop 50, the Legend Has It series). A Broadway title is a different kind of asset: a license that pays for decades and tours without the artist. Pair that with a public school teaching the subject, and you get the version of legacy the culture usually has to fight for after the founders are gone. Nas is doing it while the Roxy generation can still take a bow.
## Sources - XXL, Sept. 30, 2026: Nas takes classic Beat Street film to Broadway with new creative team - XXL, Sept. 30, 2026: Nas and Mayor Zohran Mamdani discuss hip-hop's future with opening of Bronx School of Hip-Hop - NYC Mayor's Office on YouTube, Sept. 30, 2026: Mayor and Nas sit down to discuss hip-hop in NYC
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