At some point in “If I ruled the World,” Nas – the legendary Queens, New York MC – raps: “If I ruled the world … I’d open every cell in Attica send em to Africa.” In the 1998 Hype Williams cult classic film “Belly,” Nas’s character, Sincere, actually thinks about moving himself and his family there. Sincere tells his girlfriend, Tionne, the two of them and their child should up and go to Africa as a way out of his life as a gangster (“Belly” is basically a kind of “Sopranos”) and from the violence that most black people in the US experience as normal life, especially those in its stifling inner cities. Sincere does not specify which country, but we get the sentiment.

Basically, Africa represents some kind of utopia for Nas. By the way, Tionne’s response, “Africa is far,” is also deep about the difficulty of just upping and going. UPDATE: This film review of a new film, may help unpack these contradictory sentiments of African Americans like Sincere and Tionne about the continent.

In any case, last year Nas collaborated with Damian Marley, son of Bob, on the concept album “Distant Relatives,” in which they aim to engage with the music of Africa. The result is pleasing.

They ended up sampling, among others, the music of Fela Kuti, Mulatu Astatke and Ahmadou and Mariam, four of the legends of African music whose influence resonated far beyond their birthplaces.  On the opening track they sample Mulatu Astatke’s Yègellé Tezeta:

Take the Ahmadou and Mariam sample of “Sabali” on “Patience”:

Anyway, for all his symbolic politics and his clearly dynamic engagement with things African, Nas has always made it clear that he wanted to one day play a concert or perform his music in person on the African continent. If the money was right and not because of some sentimental reason.

In Youtube video footage, dated 2008 and taken at a press conference, Nas responds to a question by a journalist on why he hadn’t performed in an African country yet. He tells them he visited the continent three times. Once for his birthday and twice to perform at corporate gigs. He mentions Nigeria as one of those destinations. He implies there are “horror stories” – mosquitoes on planes, fears of being robbed and because of misunderstandings between Africans and African Americans –  that put his fellows off from traveling to Africa. But he was planning to go soon.

Well, it seems over the New Year’s Nas had an opportunity to perform in an African country. He was supposed to play a big party or concert in the Angolan capital. The Angolan promoter even wired him a down payment of $300,000 to get him to commit. In the end Nas did not turn up. No one would have cared, except that Nas’s American promoter as well as his son, who were in Angola presumably as the advance party, are being held hostage by a local promoter in Luanda. No word what local authorities did to get the two men released from the kidnappers, but the UK Guardian reports that the US Embassy succeeded in getting the men removed to a hotel, though they’re not allowed to leave the country.

Nas claims it’s all a miscommunication.

We don’t know all the details except what we read in the press and online and we hope the promoter and his son are safe, but one consequence of this may be to bring attention to how arbitrary and informal “justice” (more like injustice) works for ordinary Angolans who aren’t politically connected, have a second passport of a Western country and not powerful enough to take the “law” into their own hands.