New York underground emcee Avatar the Articulate pays homage to the Nas classic It Was Written with a self-produced remake of the album cut “The Message,” as featured on Avatar’s forthcoming tribute album, It Was Bitten. Despite the satirically seeming title, Avatar’s motivation for this release, accompanying his reverence to Nas, is to offer a new vantage point to the time-honored original, so that others can appreciate the concepts and issues addressed in his music.