Word life. AZ is one of the illest rappers to ever grace the mic, in my opinion Do or Die rivals Illmatic, and he has a grip of work beyond that. Even his newer shit like A.W.O.L. was fire. Big ups to AZ and much respect. I'd say some of his producing is "unfortunate" and a little mainstream but put him over Peterock or Premo and it's straight Hip-Hop (The come Up // Rather Unique). I'm just amazed AZ never blew, especially with all the colabortive work he did with Nas (Illmatic, Stillmatic, The Firm, etc)