Nas has insisted that hip-hop is dead - or at least very different from what it used to be.

The rapper has claimed that greed and obsession with wealth has transformed hip-hop into a business industry rather than a movement of artistic expression.

Speaking to the Boston Herald newspaper, he said: "It [hip-hop] died - we're just picking up the bones in the graveyard and banging drums with the bones and recreating what was there.

"It definitely died, but that doesn't mean that records can't be made, that thing can't happen to get the world in a frenzy again. The difference is I don't know who these people are, I don't know what their intentions are and I don't think they care."

He went on to add: "It's just about money. And that's cool, I like money. But it's dead... I'm glad it became a business because that's the way of life and that's the way it happens. But before it was the thing to do, it was the most scariest, most beautiful, the most genius you ever witnessed. Now it's just a ghost of what it was.

"Artists get signed all over the place. They get told to make music like this or that, tattoo themselves up and they think they're gangstas and that's rap."