He talks about establishing himself in a competitive marketplace, being authentic, maximizing opportunities and the importance of social media to maintaining relevance and how failure shaped his career, too.
An interesting conversation for sure. (HT @maids_zenith)
This is one of those albums that from the start, it’d be really hard to like it. First, Nas wanted to name it after a slur.
After causing a stir and using that whole thing as a media tool, he decided to simply call the album Nas, figuring the imagery of the album cover would do the trick. (The reality is, the label wanted to avoid the fights that would’ve broken out at music stores when the 5 kids who still buy CDs went to look for the CD…and asked for it by name.)
I can’t tell if I disliked this album so much because of all of the rancor that opposed it, because I’ve spent the past two days listening to Jean Grae and 9th Wonder’s masterpiece “Jeanius” or if I’m just tired of Nas’ act that he’s some sort of conscious rapper who masquerades in the mainstream as the savior of rap.
Don’t get me wrong. Esco is once, forever and always one of the best of all-time. But after a while, you have to start to wonder what the guy is trying to do. Or maybe you just stop thinking people like him ought to take themselves so darn seriously.
The album uses beats that wouldn’t be good enough for a mixtape. It’s just retread stuff that’s not fit for the kind of stuff we’d expected from Nas at this point in his career. I don’t know if anyone really expects him to produce a great album, on par with his debut Illmatic or with Stillmatic, arguably his other “great” album. But it’s starting to get a little — dare I say, boring — listening to what amounts to minimal amounts of artistic depth in his rhymes, spewing out bombast and divisive silliness that doesn’t really uplift those he’s trying to reach and alienates those who otherwise appreciate the art form.
On track 10, “Untitled”, it amounts to a ode to Louis Farrakhan. Now there’s a way to make your album spirited. On “Make The World Go Round,” he pairs Chris Brown and The Game, in what amounts to the most bizarre dual cameo in history. At least, in recent hip-hop memory anyway…
The real thing about this album is that it’s full of bluster and none of the tracks are particularly memorable. You can’t even listen and point to some resounding standout track that makes you go “Ok, that’s signature Nasir there…” Nope. Nothing. The guy has a track called “Fried Chicken” for goodness sakes. (It’s as bad as the name implies.) “Sly Fox” is a track about Fox News.
In terms of currency, the album is very much focused in the “now and here” versus anything else. I suppose that’s laudable to some degree. It’s a tome of reflective relevance, that tries to define itself in the cloak of the identity of an entire people. I think that in some ways, Nas bites off way more than he can chew here. When I first heard about the project, I thought it might be interesting. Nas is one of the most prolific writers in mainstream hip-hop and has a patience and plodding sense about his craft, that I thought few could pull this off.
In the end, Nas falls short of what are probably his own lofty expectations about using an album to create a much larger dialogue about a troubling history, a past that we can’t shake and a future that we are all trying to envision. One where words might still hurt, but don’t carry the vestiges of a legacy not just of a few mean people in a far off place; but those who were entrusted and empowered at the highest halls of power.
Even if I’m not surprised, it doesn’t mean that it’s not unfortunate.
[rating: 1.5]
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