renassance

ReNASsance

One was ehh…..

The other was Illmatic/

That’s one hot album every ten year average’

I wonder how Jay-Z feels now.

I write this as Magic 3 just started to play again – the last album from a double-trilogy collaboration between NaS and Hitboy that began with the Grammy-winning King’s Disease in 2020. It was an album that was just supposed to keep NaS busy through the pandemic, but something about Hitboy sparked off something in NaS – and the rest is history.

2021 – Holy Matrimony With Hitboy

When King’s Disease dropped, I really didn’t love it like I do the rest of NaS’ discography. The beats felt too shiny for me. I preferred the stripped-down production that peppered NaS’ albums over the years; production on tracks like Nas Is Like, I Gave You Power, One Mic, Project Windows, Revolutionary Warfare, Star Wars, Rewind and so on. However, I listened because NaS’ on a bad day is still NaS; a rapper’s rapper. 

At least, it is superior to the album before it – Nasir.

When it [King’s Disease] won the Grammy, the only person who probably was more unimpressed than me must have been NaS himself; only referring to the win in a throwaway line in the sequel album. I can give you at least four other albums that deserved Grammys long before now: It Was Written, I Am, Stillmatic, God’s Son, Life Is Good – those are five.

And I didn’t even have to mention the legendary Illmatic.

But it did win and, at least it seemed as though mainstream was finally acknowledging what I had known for at twenty years. I still bump KD I occasionally; it is still a solid NaS album after all.

And then, news dropped that a sequel was being prepped. I was excited as only a NaS album can excite me. When King’s Disease II finally dropped in August 2021, a year or so after the first one, I was blown away. That is easily the best entry in the entire NaS/Hitboy series; slightly edging out Magic I because of a particular guest spot on the album.

And no, it’s not Eminem.

And now, we’re at the end of the 3-year 6-album run, and it’s been nothing short of magical.

1999 – 2002 – Inconsistency Claims and Rebuttal

The second-greatest criticism NaS has received throughout his stellar thirty-year-plus career (the first being his beat choices; imagine!) is his tendency to be inconsistent. Jay-Z shot at him with this in the title track Blueprint 2 (which contains the best disses Jay had through their battle), with lines like:

‘Cause a nigga wear kufi it don’t mean that he bright,

Just means you don’t understand all the bullshit that he writes

Is it Ochie Wally Wally or is it One Mic?

Is it Black Girl lost or shorty owe you for ice?

I’ve been real all my life/they confuse it with conceit/

#Facts

No matter how good or true that sounds, the argument has been put paid to with this epic run. All through the six albums, NaS is unwavering in his focus, whether it’s black empowerment (Ultra Black) or rapping through the perspective of rap beef (Beef). Every time I hear any of these new albums, I’m reminded of the classic Rakim line (which I may have quoted too many times);

Timeless/so age don’t count in the booth,

When your flow/stay submerged/In the fountain of youth/

2021 – Respect The Pioneers

In a sport where people are so quick to dismiss people over a certain age, I am quite grateful for NaS (who turned the big 5-0 on September 14) and Jay-Z (53, who dropped the sterling God Did verse when he was 52). Like it or not, there’s NO ONE doing it at their level at the moment.

Yeah. I said NO ONE.

Which makes me wonder why rap is so dismissive of her veterans. It’s the only music genre that does that consistently; just look over at Hip hop’s closest neighbor The Blues or Jazz. Or at literally any other music genre – Juju, Afrobeat (Fela’s), Reggae – name it; people in their 60s and 70s are still doing it BIG.

So what is wrong with Hip hop? And I hate to bring race into this (I am African after all) but has the self-loathing been conditioned that deeply into us? Why does Hip-hop revile its elder statesmen so much? Wasn’t it just last year 21 Savage called NaS ‘irrelevant’?

Imagine that.

2023 – An Argument For The GOAT

NaS’ pen always could unlock thoughts and images belonging to the ‘deepest’ of minds – and it remains nimble and deft as ever. He still retains that ability to court the imagination with minimal words, and his delivery makes the densest of sentences an easy meal – a quite palatable one even. There’s arguably no rapper who can match NaS bar for bar. Add that to the fact that he dropped his first verse in 1991…a verse that shook the world…

Illmatic, his 1994 debut is regarded by many as the greatest rap album ever. And Library of Congress seems to think so, because in 2021 Illmatic was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.

And he’s still making ground-breaking albums in 2023…

Who’s your GOAT again?

Fun fact – both Nas and Hiphop just turned 50 within a few weeks of each other!

All of that is an aside. I have been a fan of rap for almost 30 years, and I have been a fan of NaS for every one of those years. And I can tell you; proudly, NaS is one of the many, many things that make me grateful I was born when I was.