The World Is Yours

track from Illmatic, produced by Pete Rock in his mount vernon basement studio, recorded at battery studios in 1992 and released by columbia in may 1994. pete rock looped a five second segment from ahmad jamal's 1970 "i love music" using an e-mu sb-1200 sampler, sped it up, and nas asked rock to sing the hook "the world is yours," a line lifted from scarface. rock's attorney lita rosario-richardson said that when nas' team approached rock to use beats for lost tapes 2, rock asked for a resolution on royalties for "the world is yours", a dispute that surfaced publicly in 2022.