I Can

“I Can” takes the most recognizable beginner-piano piece in the classical repertoire – “Fur Elise,” the tune every kid who’s ever touched a keyboard has stumbled through – and loops it, largely intact, as the entire instrumental bed for a Nas single. That’s an unusual choice on its own; what makes it stranger is the audience Nas built the song for. Rather than another verse aimed at hip-hop’s usual adult listenership, “I Can” is written directly to children, walking through Black history, self-respect, and the value of education in blunt, teachable language – a Nas record you could genuinely play in a classroom.

The Beethoven loop isn’t incidental to that pivot; it’s the mechanism that makes it land. A melody every kid already half-recognizes from a piano lesson turns the song into something closer to a nursery rhyme with real stakes than a lecture set to a beat, and Nas’s delivery – clear, unhurried, built for comprehension rather than density – meets the sample at the same register. It’s a rapper widely regarded as one of the genre’s most technically dense lyricists (Illmatic’s reputation rests on exactly that density) deliberately simplifying his own instrument to reach an audience that record usually never considers, and doing it without condescension.

The result became one of the biggest commercial hits of Nas’s catalog, played in actual schools years after release, which is a strange kind of legacy for a song built on a piano exercise – proof that a familiar four bars of Beethoven, aimed at the right listener, can carry more than its own melody ever asked of it.

Greatest of All Time. A children’s-education record hiding inside a Hot 100 hit, held together by the most recognizable eight bars in classical music.

Hero image: “God’s Son” single artwork, Columbia Records / Ill Will Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.