"Thief's Theme" is a single from Nas' double album Street's Disciple

Street's Disciple

Street's Disciple is the seventh studio album by American rapper Nas, released November 30, 2004 on Columbia Records in the United States. It is a double album entitled after one of his rhymes from "Live at the Barbeque" by Main Source, which was the song marking his musical debut...

. The single contains vocals from Nas' song "The World Is Yours

The World Is Yours (song)

"The World Is Yours" is the third single from rapper Nas's debut album Illmatic, released a month after the album. It is considered by some music critics one of the greatest hip-hop songs ever recorded. The song was produced by Pete Rock—who also sings the song's chorus—and samples "I Love Music"...

" from his first album Illmatic

Illmatic

Illmatic is the debut album of American rapper Nas, released April 19, 1994, on Columbia Records. Following his signing to Columbia with the help of MC Serch, recording sessions for the album took place during 1992 to 1993 at Chung King Studios, D&D Recording, Battery Studios, and Unique Recording...

:

The song featured an interpolation

Interpolation (music)

Interpolation in music refers to an abrupt change in musical elements from the main theme.-In classical music:In music and musical composition, especially 20th century and later, interpolation is an abrupt change of elements, with continuation of the first idea...

 of the famous riff

RIFF

The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....

 from Iron Butterfly

Iron Butterfly

Iron Butterfly is a US psychedelic rock band best known for the 1968 hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".Their heyday was the late 1960s, but the band has been reincarnated with various members. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is the 31st best-selling album in the world, selling more than 25 million copies.-History:The...

's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" performed by Incredible Bongo Band

Incredible Bongo Band

The Incredible Bongo Band, also known as Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band, was a project started in 1972 by Michael Viner, a record artist manager and executive at MGM Records. Viner was called on to supplement the soundtrack to the virtually anonymous B film The Thing With Two Heads. The...

. Nas would again use the same sample on the 2006 single "Hip Hop is Dead

Hip Hop Is Dead (song)

"Hip Hop Is Dead" is the first and title single taken from Nas' 2006 album of the same name. It is produced by and features will.i.am. It peaked at number 48 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, as well as number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100...

".

Nas sponsored a contest in the United Kingdom in 2004, encouraging entrants to record a verse using the instrumental version of the song. The winner would perform a verse on the song, which appears on the UK version of Street's Disciple. Rising Son won the competition.

The song was featured in Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

's Academy Award winning film The Departed

The Departed

The Departed is a 2006 American crime thriller film, fashioned as a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs. The film was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by William Monahan...

but was not featured on the soundtrack.

Music video

The video follows three men wearing black ski masks who are headed to a warehouse where Nas is rapping. On their way, other individuals are seen wearing ski masks as well; be they seemingly ordinary citizens, criminals, or law enforcers. This undiscriminating adornment of a ski mask is used to ironically reveal who in society is easily identified as a thief and who is not. The crew stops at a convenience store where a little boy is shown wearing the ski mask, symbolizing the child's gradual robbery of his parent's hard earned money. They visit a strip club where a stripper is seen wearing a ski mask as she dances on a pole, symbolizing her robbery upon her customers. They pass by a street vendor wearing a ski mask and selling wide catalogue of bootlegged CDs, symbolizing his robbery from artists and filmmakers. A scantily clad young woman in the street is seen wearing a ski mask while being cuddled by her supposed lover (she is also seen wearing a necklace with a small shovel-shaped pendant attached to it that has the engravement "Gold Digger" on it); this symbolizes her robbery of the man that is holding her. The ski mask symbol starts to gain more weight as it is seen worn by two police officers in a patrol car. A group of white-collared office workers are carrying their intoxicated friend home, symbolizing their robbery of their fellow employee (peer pressured drug abuse). Lastly, in a newspaper article that is being read by a seemingly wealthy middle-aged caucasian male (also wearing a mask), shows two CEOs merging their corporation while both of them are wearing ski masks, symbolizing their robbery of their numerous subordinates who probably lost jobs due to the merger. At the end of the music video, Nas joins the group, himself putting on a ski mask to represent that indeed he will take on the 'thief's theme'. The music video had fair rotation on MTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

 and BET

Bet

Bet or BET may refer to:* A wager in gambling* Basic Economics Test * Bet , the second letter in many Semitic alphabets, including Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Syriac* Brunauer-Emmett-Teller isotherm. See BET_theory...

.

A-side

1. "Thief's Theme" (Clean Album Version) (3:00)
2. "Thief's Theme" (Explicit Album Version) (3:10)
3. "Thief's Theme" (Instrumental) (2:59)

B-side

1. "You Know My Style" (Clean Album Version) (2:54)
2. "You Know My Style" (Explicit Album Version) (2:54)
3. "You Know My Style" (Instrumental) (2:49)