Nasir Jones is rap's most inconsistent prophet. Will he strike? Or will he not? The genre-defining highs of hip-hop's bible Illmatic have been matched with the soul-sucking lows of Nastradamus, and has also released an abundance of average-at-best material that lands dead between them. Despite this, hype for a new Nas release has been at a fever pitch since 2016, after his fiery, acrobatic performance on DJ Khaled's so ironically titled single 'Nas Album Done' - not only did Nas sound like he was at the top of his game, but his prior album, 2012's Life Is Good, was considered one of his best in years. There was reason to believe his follow-up would be great, and although the crowds certainly seem split on Nasir - personally, my expectations were met.
Expectation one: a short, to-the-point project. This was all but confirmed when Kanye West announced that all albums released from his Wyoming project would be seven tracks long, having already announced he would be executive producing Nas' then untitled album due for release on June 15. Nas may not himself be aware that brevity is a strength of his - Illmatic was infamously a rush-job to meet the public's demand, and it stays watertight because he settled for only his best cuts. Nine overlong, filler-littered albums later, Nas decided to follow Kanye's seven-track rule. and it has most certainly paid off. Even Life Is Good couldn't avoid duds, and there are no 'Summer On Smash'-like failures to be found here. Opener 'Not For Radio' comes close, as Puff Daddy intrudes the track to play overeager hype-man, but from this point on there's no slipping. From the Kanye West-featuring 'Cops Shot The Kid' - the album's most infectious, energetic, and poignant track with a rapid-fire loop of Slick Rick's 'Children's Story' - to the hypnotic piano backing and punchy drums of 'Adam And Eve', Nas avoids his second achilles heel of sub-par beat selection, and works with Kanye to create a sonic palette that matches him just as skillfully as Pusha T did with him on DAYTONA. Pusha still snagged the best beat of the two - 'The Games We Play' is perhaps the beat of the year - but Kanye has has still made another highly commendable effort, and Nasir reaps the benefits. Expectation two: top-form writing. As a performer, Nas has opted for a less animated approach than he did on Khaled's 2016 teaser. Pacing through his rhymes at a calculated pace, he allows his words to breathe, being heard for what they mean rather than how they sound. This has both it's advantages and it's drawbacks; when Nas profoundly declares "I drop lines prestigious schools read to their students / Look at my album plaques, somebody agrees with the music" on the final track 'Simple Things' it resonates. However, when with just as much confidence he claims "SWAT was created to stop the Panthers", "Edgar Hoover was black", and "Fox News was started by a black dude, also true" all within the first two minutes of the album alone, he makes a fool of himself. Nevertheless, there are more winners than clunkers on Nasir, and although he's not rhyming like he did on Illmatic again (a feat I feel we can safely assume as irrepeatable) his talent is still more than evident. His depiction of shameless greed for luxury on 'Adam And Eve' is particularly unsettling; "New girl every night, two girls was every other night / Sexual addiction, gangster tradition... that's how it ended / I'm just good at existin', existin' in my truth / As long as I enjoy the fruit, yeah" and he demonstrates his undiminished knack for internal rhyme at the start of the next verse. "What come first, peace or the paper? Before I had a piece of paper, peace was in my favor / Before I sat to eat at the table, it had leeches and traitors". Seven-minute centerpiece 'Everything' is another highlight - three back-to-back-to-back standout verses over Kanye's minimalist beat and surprisingly good singing, Nas speaks on the "ghosts of dead rich whites" that float about his house, "mad a n***a bought his crib", claims he could sell Alaska back to Russia, references the recent Starbucks arrests, and speaks from the scared perspective of a child receiving it's first immunization jabs. It's sprawling, but it's gratifying, even if the track is frighteningly slow to get started. Despite being the longest album from the Wyoming project, Nasir's 26 minutes still lead to the project stopping short of something that could have potentially been greater. Unlike ye, an album that sounded complete in it's brevity, Nasir mirrors DAYTONA in the idea that had Push and Nas stuck to traditional album length, something greater could have been created. On the flip side, however, Nas keeping his album this short is perhaps the only way to avoid missteps, and to create a great album, this is preferable over a long, spotty track listing. If Nas had lengthened out Nasir, and managed to maintain consistency for an even longer period of time, this album could have compared to some of his best work. It doesn't offer quite enough to reach that high, but what it does offer is seven great tracks. "You wealthy when your kid's upbringin' better than yours" from 'Bonjour' is just another example of the many excellent thought-provokers on Nasir, and along with Kanye's expert production, who once again manages to recapture the sound of his golden years, Nas has put another fantastic release under both of their names. 83/100 |
201820162015Scores0-30 = Bad
31-49 = Sub-par 50-60 = Average 61-70 = Decent 71-80 = Good 81-89 = Great 90-99 = Incredible 100 = Perfect Archives
September 2018
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