Rapper Nas is working on his new album, and he's trying to get the word out.

The N-word, that is.

The hip-hop provocateur tells us he's planning on calling the CD simply "N-." Except, he'll be filling in the blank.

"That's the name right now," he said. Just to make sure we didn't mishear him, he spelled the racist epithet for us.

"I don't care about sales," he explained at Wednesday's MAC Cosmetics party for Sean (Diddy) Combs' new fragrance, Unforgivable. "Well, tonight I don't. I never was a big sales dude, so it never really mattered."

The slur, formerly used by Southern lynch mobs, has become a common greeting among black youth. But the Rev. Al Sharpton, also at the Core Club party, still finds it profoundly offensive.

"I'm astonished by the psychological gymnastics some people perform to make that self-denigrating word acceptable," he told us. "No other race does it. Why is it accepted?; In an industry that makes Michael Jackson take out a word that was offensive to Jewish people, why does it sanitize a word that continues to be used by the Ku Klux Klan when it attacks our people?;"

Last night, Jana Fleishman, a spokeswoman for Nas' label, Def Jam, was taken aback when we informed her of the proposed title. But after talking with the rapper, she said he changed his tune. "Nas says he was being facetious. He just started recording last week."

Meanwhile, Nas and Diddy were both amused to see Kanye West portraying himself as Jesus Christ on the cover of Rolling Stone. A 1999 video aping the Crucifixion had the two older rappers hanging on crosses.

Asked if Kanye stole their idea, Nas said, "I loaned it to him."

Diddy agreed: "It was a cool cover to me. I'm a fan of his, so it's all good."

Initially, Nigga was given as the title by Nas several times, including an October 12, 2007 performance at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City where he announced the title and release date, both confirmed by Haider Abed. Def Jam Recordings made no comment on the title. This was similar to attempts to name his 2006 album—eventually titled Hip Hop Is Dead—both "Nigga" and "Hip Hop Is Dead...The N".

L.A. Reid, chairman of Def Jam Records, has confirmed that Def Jam fully backs Nas and his decision on naming his album.
The album's title has received support from Jay-Z, Bishop Lamont, Alicia Keys, LL Cool J, Rev Run, Common, Akon, Method Man, Lupe Fiasco, David Banner, GZA, Melle Mel.

The title "Nigger" came under fire from Reverend Jesse Jackson and the NAACP, and was also dismissed as "shock value" by 50 Cent. Front Greene assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries requested New York’s Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to withdraw $84 million from the state pension fund that has been invested into Universal and its parent company, Vivendi. Universal has not made a response. The first song off the album, "Be a Nigger Too", was leaked onto the internet on April 20, 2008. The song includes numerous racist epithets in addition to the one mentioned in its title.