AZ (Rapper)
Anthony Cruz ( born March 9, 1973 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York ), better known by his stage name AZ, is an American East Coast rapper African- American- Dominican descent. He currently resides in Englewood, New Jersey.
Biography
At first he called himself The AZ Visualiza. AZ was first heard in 1994 on Nas 's debut album Illmatic on the track " Life's A Bitch " with Olu Dara. The following year, he released his own solo album Doe Or Die. This is considered by many critics and fans as AZ ' best album. Due to this fact it is also often compared to Nas ' debut Illmatic, but has the unanimous opinion not its consistently high quality. In 1996, the rap group The Firm was established, consisting of Nas, Foxy Brown, Cormega and give him self However, Cormega was replaced after a few months by the rapper Nature which led to disputes between Cormega, Nas and Nature. In AZs texts is mostly about New York politics and life in the Hood. In 2004, the album Final Call should come on the market. Due to illegal copies on the internet, it was ultimately never published. In 2005 he released the album AWOL.
In November 2006, his seventh album The format was posted in Quiet Money Records. It received mostly positive reviews and was also very well received by the fans. He worked for it among other things to MOP, the singer Jha Jha of The Diplomats, and with DJ Premier.
On 1 April 2008 published AZ his eighth studio album Undeniable. It received mostly slightly above average reviews, but could not come up to his old publications in the opinion of most critics. In addition, 2008 was finally still on the label Koch Records the hitherto unreleased album Final Call under the name Final Call: The Lost Tapes published. The title is derived from the name of Nas ' Lost Tapes.