Even on albums like Hip-Hop Is Dead or Untitled, where Nas seems to be trying to prove his skill more than anything else, there was room for that honest interrogation of self and vivid storytelling. Much of the album seems to exist not to give insight but instead to shallowly show off Nas’ gift at wordplay. It does try to grapple, albeit clumsily, with blackness in America with raps about police brutality (“White kids are brought in alive / Black kids get hit with like five” on “Cops Shot the Kid”) and offering advice to “invest” (“All this money we getting / Could be gone in a minute if we don’t invest it” on “Bonjour”). That said, the entire album is not just filled with bad lines and wayward subject matter. There’s also just some nonsensical rhymes: “And the odds is that what you love can kill you / Like a heart physician who dies from a heart attack,” he raps on “White Label.”
There are apparent anti-vaccination sentiments (“Who’s gonna know how these side effects is gonna affect me?” on “Everything”), and an unfortunate bit about what a woman might do before a date (“How many girls pre-bate right before they date?” on “Bonjour”). Instead Nasir is an exhibition on black mythology, some of it real (“Willie Lynch was a myth” from “Not for Radio”) and some of it false (“Fox News was started by a black dude” from the same song). In fact, save for a few asides about “haters” and those who want to plot his “downfall,” Nasir contains almost no deep introspection from an artist who made a career out of it. The only thing close to an explanation you might find is by very liberally reading between the lines throughout.
And now after those six years had passed, with the world wondering what he’ll say about his ex-wife’s allegations, Nas instead bypasses the subject almost completely. From the album’s cover where he carries Kelis’ wedding dress on his lap, to the lyrics that depict longing, nostalgia, anger, and introspection, Life Is Good was Nas shaping an age-old narrative of a good guy with a few demons that couldn’t make his marriage work. Nasir, meanwhile, is Nas’ first album since 2012’s Life Is Good, an album that paints their marriage from his differing perspective. In it, she described his tendency to drink until “he would black out,” the bruises he left on her body, and the constant fighting that would happen between the two, ultimately declaring her intention to leave when she was pregnant with their son, Knight, in 2009. What a few years ago would’ve sounded like a surefire classic event, a union between two legends, turned into a disheveled release of a drab record by two artists mired deep in their own controversies.Įarlier this year, Kelis revealed in an interview years of “mental and physical abuse” during her marriage with Nas. Instead, just like the night it was released, the album that ultimately arrived sounded rushed as if it was turned in at the last minute, sloppy and deflating. But Nasir -given Nas’ long absence-should have had even more time to cook, simmer, and be perfected. The reason for this delay aren’t clear as of yet, though given Kanye’s recent penchant for working on albums up until the moment of release, it’s fair to think he might’ve done the same here.
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It was delayed for almost a full day before it finally hit streaming services Saturday, June 16. Nasir didn’t show up at midnight though, or even a few hours past midnight. It had been six years since the last Nas album and two years since he made “Nas Album Done,” a song for DJ Khaled on which he ensured that the album in question was finished and coming soon. On midnight of Thursday, June 14, the long-awaited new album from Nas, which we had recently and suddenly learned was being produced by Kanye West, was expected to materialize immediately following a listening party in Queens. The way Nas’ new album was released is as noteworthy as the music itself.