9.5 Out Of 10
Let’s get a few things out the way off rip:
- This is the best rap album this year so far all respect due to Nipsey, Pusha, Cudi, and Kanye.
- This is the best rap album a emcee over 40 has ever put out on some Tom Brady shit.
- This is the second, third, at worst fourth best album of his career.
As far as 7 track “albums” go this is about as fulfilling as it can get. Nas has never struggled content wise per say but sometimes the content is too heavy to enjoy, sometimes too personal to vibe with. One of the brilliant things about Nasir is the balance of production and the balance of Nas himself. Almost all the many phases of Nas throughout his career surface on this album with A game in tow.
Wanna hear Nasty Nas? Well then play “White Label” which literally sounds like a Rza produced track lost somewhere between The Purple Tape and Supreme Clientele. Prefer Escobar – “Bonjour” is a masterpiece of a song with some unexpected high level fly shit talk.
“Eat at selective kitchens/speak on our next intentions/over creamy polenta, it comes chef recommended/come through the side entrance, I arrive bitches/crack heads still owe me from 89’ fixes.
If I am wrong tell me so but that sounds like some bars Sean Carter would spit, and I mean that as a compliment of the highest order because he is the best fly shit talker this game has ever seen. He’s also borderline pulling a sucker move slash competitive frenemy move dropping an album with Bey a day later… This album is better, so there’s that.
Nas the tech savy entrepreneur, playboy, activist, philosopher, street news reporter and so on surfaces on this dense 26 minute set. The executive production of Kanye West on Nasir is one of the finest moments of his career and his mastery reaches eight on the Richter on the instant seven minutes classic “Everything” which thumps from your car, from your wireless headphones on break (or not), and pretty soon on radio and dare I say stadiums.
Kanye is 4 for 4 getting in the artists pocket as a sample from one of Nas’ idols Slick Rick gives the poignant, appropriate, and timely “Cops Shot The Kid” where activist and street reporter Nas meet with lines like “White Kids get bought in alive, Black Kids get hit with like five” and “Let’s remind em why Kaep kneels.”
The Puff Daddy delaying opus to “Not For Radio” is the best start to a Nas album since Stillmatic; “Senegal’s finest, minerals, diamonds/the earth is cursed but I survived many climates.”
Although the album is still appropriately titled, listening to Nas, even vocally speaking you could call this album Life Is Good part Deux-he sounds fresh, happy, and free. The 19 year old Nas who on Illmatic couldn’t sleep “cuz sleep is the cousin of death” is not only resting on his now legendary laurels, he’s just resting well in general. On the albums closer “Simple Things” Nas sums up the feel of the album with the last few bars, “Everybody saying that my humility’s infectious, I just want my kids to have the same peace that I’m blessed with.”
If 95% of the artists in the game make this album I would give it 10. And everything about this album screams 10 except one thing: he has made better album(s). There is the obvious Illmatic, and most people would lean towards The Lost Tapes after that and that’s justified. I have always felt It Was Written was better than The Lost Tapes lyrically and 80% of The Lost Tapes are really the first version of I Am(and I had that album from 98-01). By the time The Lost Tapes was released I had worn “my copy” out. And I tend to still feel 96’ Nas is the best emcee I ever heard; in the 22 years since it’s release, I cannot find one solo rap album lyrically speaking that reaches the levels of “The Message”, “I Gave You Power”, “Take It In Blood”, and “The Set-Up” and I invite you all to show me who and when.
As close to a 10 as there can be. If albums like Gods Son and Stillmatic are you fifth and sixth best albums of your career you might be the best to ever do it but that’s another argument for another day.
