My Gut Reaction: Nas - The Lost Tapes II (July 19, 2019)

Seventeen years ago, Nas released The Lost Tapes, a compilation made up of songs that never appeared on any proper Nas album, but had leaked to various mixtapes over the previous years, developing such a reputation among hip hop heads that the man figured this would be an easy way to keep his name active while “opening up the vaults”, revealing tracks that were never intended to see the light of day, while also providing the various producers affected with publishing rights and proper compensation from the label. It’s considered a classic in many circles, a feat made even more amazing when you remember that it’s a compilation and not a cohesive album. Of course, people throw the word “classic” around so frequently these days that it means less than nothing, but The Lost Tapes was so well-liked within our chosen genre (and Nas had a collection of unreleased songs that rivaled that of the late 2Pac, apparently) that a follow-up, The Lost Tapes II, was promised as far back as December 2003.

That album just barely dropped last Friday, so at least Nas finished what he started, right? Perhaps that’s the lesson I should take away from all of this.

The Lost Tapes II is a joint venture between Def Jam Records, Nas’s current label (as opposed to Columbia, who released the first volume) and Mass Appeal Records, the imprint our host launched in 2014. It follows what was Esco’s eleventh studio album, Nasir, which was more a part of the Kanye West G.O.O.D. Music circus that took over the music industry in the summer of 2018 than it was a Nas project. It also follows at least one entirely different unreleased album that Nas recorded and shelved in favor of the Nasir opportunity – not even our host could resist being a part of a huge publicity machine, right?

Being a Def Jam release, The Lost Tapes II ignores all of our host’s Columbia Records output in favor of outtakes they owned from the four albums released on their label: Hip Hop is Dead (that name sounds awfully familiar), Untitled, the well-received Life Is Good, and the aforementioned Nasir. This means that whatever version of The Lost Tapes II Nas had in mind back in 2003 no longer exists, unless his old label decides to cash in on the name again. Interestingly enough, while the original Lost Tapes came about as a way to combat the rampant leaking and bootlegging of Nas’s projects (his third album, I Am… The Autobiography, was famously bootlegged so heavily that the man was forced to alter his entire vision), The Lost Tapes II seems to merely be a way for Nas to say that he’s still active in the music community, as only a small number of the sixteen tracks contained within have ever appeared anywhere else. The rest of these songs have been safely stored on one of the man’s hard drives, never being heard by anyone else aside from their creators. Until now.

Nas advertised The Lost Tapes II on social media by playing up the featured producers (indeed, there are no guest rappers on here). Granted, these names sound impressive on virtual paper: Pharrell Williams, Swizz Beatz, The Alchemist, No I.D., The RZA (!), and two new Pete Rock beats (!!!!!), along with some lesser-known names who tried their best to satisfy the man’s needs and just missed the mark. The Pete Rock placements are newsworthy by themselves, as the man is one of the sonic architects of the only album Nas has ever released that is an indisputable classic, Illmatic, and, at least as far as I know, it was never reported that those two were even working together during the past decade, so the man knows how to keep a secret. What’s more notable for me, however, are the names that are missing from the list, producers who absolutely have shelved Nas tracks sitting around somewhere looking for a new home such as Large Professor, Salaam Remi, and DJ Premier (all of whom have given Nas some of the best songs of his entire fucking career). I mean, RZA’s nice and all, but can you imagine how rap Twitter would have exploded had Preemo ended up on The Lost Tapes II?

Of course, all of the songs here weren’t considered good enough to make their respective albums, so it’s more likely that these are all going to suck.

This is going to be a lengthy review, so let’s just jump in, right?

(And stay tuned to the blog for some information regarding some changes that are being implemented soon.)

1. NO BAD ENERGY

And we’re off. I’d say that the mere presence of ArrabMuzik working alongside him on the instrumental for “No Bad Energy” has tempered Swizz Beatz’s natural instincts, but I’ve listened to POISON, and I know the one-man band man is capable of decidedly relaxed soundscapes (at least on some of the tracks on that project he actually produced), so. The beat isn’t bad, really, although I don’t think it’s strong enough to ever earn a place on a proper album. Our host, however, completely fucking lost me during the first verse: while he technically sounds okay, he spends way too many bars defending the existence of the song “Oochie Wally”, laughing off those who ever suggested that it wasn’t a “hit”. (No, dummy, we know that “Oochie Wally” was played on the radio every hour of every day upon its release – we’re making fun of it because it sucks.) You’d think Nas, of all people, would understand that popularity does not equate to quality, but whatever floats your boat, kid. After a terribly dull chorus comprised of the song title and a bunch of ad-libs, Nas returns to admonish rappers who haven’t truly lived the life they glamorize in their rhymes, which, when combined with the “Oochie Wally” stuff, sounds an awful lot like he’s attempting to respond to at least two of Jay-Z’s direct attacks from “Takeover”, which makes no sense, as this song would have been recorded long after those two buried their respective hatchets. I certainly didn’t expect our host to adopt a Smoothe da Hustler-esque cadence toward the end of the track, but just because there’s proof that Nas obviously listened to other artists from New York at some point doesn’t mean this song affected me in any way.

2. VERNON FAMILY

Speaking of Jay-Z, “Vernon Family” sounds like Nas listened to “Change Clothes” or “Frontin’” (a Pharrell song merely featuring Hov, but just go with me here) and told the producer, “Get me that sound!”, likely while smoking a cigar, banging a desk with his fist, and demanding more photos of Spider-Man. The thing is, Nas doesn’t know how to react to a Skateboard P instrumental (not for nothing has his path only barely crossed with that of The Neptunes during his career), so he fills the void with boasts, bullshit, shout-outs to the neighborhood, and, obviously, a bizarre conversation with a romantic partner. (“But you fighting what the essence of a woman is / I respect you, my love’s limitless / But what are you becoming? / You want to be the man of the woman? Play your position / Morning or night I’m licking the pudding, ain’t I?”) All of this happens after he claims that his success wouldn’t have stopped him from blasting at you with that TEC-9 he kept in his dresser… back in 1996. (Today, he’d have to conduct a survey before considering it.) Our host’s attention span is all over the goddamn place here: his bars never stay in one place long enough for any of this to ever make sense. Pharrell’s beat is also boring as shit, so in the future please keep the Neptunes away from Nas and vice versa. Oh, and you don’t have to listen to this mess because I just did the dirty work for you. Give me my flowers while I can still smell them.

3. JARREAU OF RAP (SKATT ATTACK) (FEAT. AL JARREAU & KEYON HARROLD)

The already-infamous first release from The Lost Tapes II, “Jarrreau of Rap (Skatt Attack)”, is polarizing as all hell: I have yet to come across anybody who finds it merely “alright”. How do I feel about it? Look, here’s the thing: I have many writing projects (both related to the site and otherwise) that haven’t yet seen the light of day, and some of them never will, even if a vocal group of fans demanded online that I do just that. Not every single thing I write is good, or even passable. (I realize that opens me up to criticism, but fuck it.) The very same goes for Nasir: just because he had the opportunity to record a song with the late Al Jarreau doesn’t mean it was automatically going to be good. This shit is fucking atrocious. I appreciate our host’s desire to experiment with his flow seemingly because “someone said I was unadventurous”, but, and let this be a lesson to any and all artists, not everything you create is going to be deserving of an audience. Nas’s scatting and his actual bars over this Xharlie Black production, which sounds like the theme song from a failed NBC sitcom removed from the fall 1993 schedule after airing just five episodes, don’t sound good at all, and if there were any justice in the world, his work on this instrumental would have the producer run out of this game for good. Jarreau’s appearance toward the end of the track also underscores how painfully awkward Nas sounded throughout “Jarreau of Rap {Skatt Attack)”. More artists should be willing to take more chances such as this, but not this.

TL:DR – “Jarreau of Rap (Skatt Attack)” is horrible, and anybody making excuses for it is merely doing so because it’s coming from Nas and they believe he’s deserving of multiple second chances for some reason. Look, Illmatic can only buy you so much goodwill.

4. LOST FREESTYLE

A bit confusing, as “Lost Freestyle” hardly comes across as a proper freestyle. Its very title also doesn’t make much sense: there’s no way this sat on Nasir’s hard drive as “Lost Freestyle”, as that reads like a sort-of title track, doesn’t it? This isn’t bad, though. Nas’s energy is on the higher end here, his bars skipping around clever wordplay, brand names, and harrowing street tales as though he recorded the track inside a bouncy castle, and that, plus producer Statik Selektah’s Angela Bofill-sampling soul-bap, make for a song that folks will be grateful to see released to the masses. (About fucking time we stumbled upon something decent.) Not sure what project this was originally recorded for, though: I was originally thinking Life Is Good, but quickly realized that the odds of Def Jam placing a Statik beat on one of their biggest projects in 2012 was highly unlikely, so I’m guessing this is a remnant of one of the producer’s own projects that Nas recorded, but ultimately refused to sign off on until now. Regardless, this wasn’t bad.

5. TANASIA

When Kanye West’s “Dark Fantasy” first dropped, I proclaimed The RZA’s instrumental to be the finest he had ever produced outside of the Wu-Tang camp. I stand behind that statement (and before you contest me, nope, “Diary of a Madman” falls into a gray area where the Gravediggaz album it appears on was not a Wu project, but the song primarily features members of the extended Wu family, so it’s weird and doesn’t count toward this), and in a way I was kind of hoping his previously-vaulted contributions to The Lost Tapes II would at least be decent, even though I was pretty vocal about them likely being terrible to anyone who would listen. So here I am, after having listened to “Tanasia”, and I have to say, the beat isn’t very good or memorable, but it doesn’t exactly suck, either. (I will say that I’m thankful RZA didn’t try to unload this onto one of his Clan cohorts, although Prince Rakeem himself probably could have pulled this one off.) As expected, though, Nasir sounds fucking terrible here. From the awful chorus (where he posits the only two places a woman can hail from are either Queensbridge or… the entire fucking continent of Asia) to the weird lust rap-slash-Asian fetish bars Nas unleashes throughout his three verses over this barely-changing loop, “Tanasia” is as stupid as our host opening the second verse sounds when he says, “She edumacated.” Yes, that is an actual thing that happens here. He also rhymes “Asia” with “Asia” toward the end of the this verse, but you know, this is Nas we’re talking about. Even as a recovering Wu stan, I see no reason for this collaboration to ever have been encouraged in the first place.

 

6. ROYALTY (FEAT. RAVAUGHN)

Plays as an unofficial sequel to God’s Son’s “I Can”, except instead of children, this time around Nas is speaking directly to grown-ass adults, chastising their choices while offering unsolicited life advice. He spends a lot of time dealing with dudes, but women also receive a verse, albeit one with a slight misogynistic bent: after generalizing all “football wives [and] basketball wives” as gold diggers, he talks about how cool it is to be with “somebody you love” who always has food ready for you when you get home from work. Guest crooner RaVaughn’s chorus, likely written by Frank Ocean (who receives a writing credit here) and certainly performed as though it were originally recorded by him, also fails the opposite sex in this regard: men are told “don’t wind up dead” while women are merely instructed to “cross your legs”. Um, sure, okay. Hit-Boy’s instrumental isn’t among his best, and Preacher Nas isn’t my favorite, so let’s just move on from these empty sentiments, shall we?

7. WHO ARE YOU (FEAT. ERIC RANIER)

Although technically “Who Are You” isn’t as bad as “Jarreau of Rap (Skatt Attack)” (and seriously, what the fuck is with that parenthetical – it sounds like one of those cheap toy sets you see advertised during Teen Titans Go! programming blocks on Cartoon Network), it certainly gives that earlier effort a run for its money, as this shit is fucking terrible. (This was also previously released on a mixtape, although that doesn’t negate its quality.) Over an Eric Hudson instrumental that approximates the shitty R&B that flooded radio airwaves in the mid-to-late 1990’s, Nasir Jones tries to tackle a serious topic, observing and summarizing an older “intellectual” who dares to lecture the younger generation of Black people for not being as much of a positive force in their communities as he and his peers are. Ironically, this is a role that Nas himself has filled since, oh, let’s just say Nastradamus for the hell of it, but self-awareness is not one of our host’s strong suits, as the second verse finds him comparing himself to the likes of Marcus Garvey, Muhammad Ali, and George Washington Carver. Literally. After Carver’s name is evoked, he actually adds himself to the list: “I’m Nas with incredible music.” Pride in your work is one thing, but Nas takes this shit to a level that hasn’t yet been conceived in the ego. Crooner David Ranier’s chorus is almost toxically reprehensible, as well. You may find yourselves curious to hear just how bad this one is: I implore you, don’t. I assure you that your time is much more valuable than that.

8. ADULT FILM (FEAT. SWIZZ BEATZ)

“Dick Tracy, detective, inspecting hos, need a hug / You need to detect this dick.” I could talk about how subdued this Swizz Beatz production ended up being (not good, mind you, just subdued), or how Swizzy himself appears but doesn’t seem to sound comfortable over his own work, but I think the vast majority of “Adult Film” (which, yeah, is about fucking, but in Nasir’s obtuse descriptive manner) can be summed up with the one-and-a-half bars that began this paragraph. Fuck this song.

9. WAR AGAINST LOVE

Maybe he was trying to verbalize how it feels to be in the midst of an actual war, when confusion and terror reign as your mind darts into millions of directions at once (I highly doubt it), but Nasir is all over the fucking map on “War Against Love”, a DJ Khalil- and DJ Dahi-produced track where our host constantly switches up his flow not to get any sort of point across, but because he was likely still trying to work out how he should sound over the instrumental. I do this all the time, and you probably do too: sometimes saying things out loud help you figure out problems and solutions that you couldn’t come up with by merely playing the words in your head. Too bad he never figured out his gameplan: this song is a fucking mess. I did appreciate how he briefly touched on his transitions through multiple religions before settling on his current agnostic beliefs, but “War Against Love” isn’t about that, so.

10. THE ART OF IT (FEAT. J. MYERS)

Jesus fucking Christ. At least our host is consistent with his tin ear for beats: how else could one explain how he finally, finally reconnected with Pete Rock, one of the few producers who helped Illmatic hone its classic sound, and walk away with what I can only describe as reheated leftovers from the Soul Brother’s refrigerator? This instrumental, which reuses the horn lover’s own work on “Straighten It Out” (along with a crib from Naughty By Nature’s “Uptown Anthem” for good measure) in the worst way possible, is godawful. For his part, Nas actually doesn’t sound bad, briefly touching on his divorce from his ex Kelis (which dates the recording of “The Art of It” to around the Life Is Good sessions) and some other personal drama before stepping back into omniscient narrator mode. I could easily hear “The Art Of It” on a proper album with a completely reworked instrumental, but what we ended up with…man, what the fuck?

11. HIGHLY FAVORED

The RZA’s beat on “Highly Favored” is slightly better than his work on “Tanasia”, but Nas was smart to keep both tracks off of official projects. (Until now, I suppose.) “Highly Favored” finds our host fully submerged in his holier-than-thou street professor persona, kind of like a higher-priced Killah Priest, and to his credit, his “lessons” and other bullshit sound decent enough over Bobby Digital’s production. But the overall sound of this song is a miss for me: it’s low-energy, no-stakes hip hop, and Nas hasn’t convinced me that he’s capable of that kind of track just yet. RZA was clearly coasting here, selling Nas a beat he had been sitting on for twenty years or something, and our host graciously affixed some randomized lyrics to it. This is not how a “good song” is made, you too, and Wu stans racing past one another in order to be the first to proclaim Nas and The RZA as needing to do an album together are just deluding themselves.

12. QUEENS WOLF

Look, this song is dumb, but Nas knows it’s dumb, as he kept it off of his proper albums for a reason. A song about our host turning into a werewolf and stalking around the Queensbridge projects looking for food would be a hard sell in any era of hip hop for any artist to any label. But at least Nas tries to fully own the concept, even with all of the asinine proselytizing and boasts-n-bullshit wherein. DJ Toomp’s beat doesn’t match the subject matter: ideally, a werewolf would be considered “scary”, but nothing about the music used here would ever spark fear in the heart of the listener. More likely, you’ll be laughing your ass off, especially if you’re anything like me and you appreciated how a song called “Queens Wolf” (itself a play on the flick Teen Wolf) kicks off with the image of our narrator/wolf playing basketball. It’s a pity he never gets back to the court to dominate motherfuckers on here, but alas; he’s too busy trying to prove to us yet again how and why he’s a better rapper than any of your favorites. At least Nas wasn’t portraying a James Cagney-esque gumshoe or a young woman named Scarlet on here, though.

13. IT NEVER ENDS

The Alchemist checks in with a seemingly endless (no pun intended) loop that renders the entire galaxy monotonous and dull, and Nasir’s voice, devoid of inflection and emotion, doesn’t help all that much either. “It Never Ends” repurposes some bars from a classic freestyle by The Notorious B.I.G. (a guy who didn’t actually like Nas during his lifetime, a fact our host has confirmed on multiple occasions) to make a statement about gun control or some shit, a message that never sticks because the rest of “It Never Ends” is simply braggadocio and whatever other horseshit our host decided to record that day. Fans wanted Nas and Alan to get back in the studio together: they should be careful what they wish for, is what I say, or maybe they should use their powers for good, such as wanting the current bullshit administration to get those kids out of those cages. (Imagine if Nas wrote and recorded his Untitled album today.) And I wouldn’t be so proud to boast about having recorded a song with Chris Brown, dick. I know what you were trying to go for, but you could have used almost literally any other artist’s name in place of an unrepentant coke-addled violent misogynist. I said what I said.

14. YOU MEAN THE WORLD TO ME

So there’s a bait-and-switch here egregious enough to warrant reporting Def Jam and Mass Appeal to the Better Business Bureau. I’ll elaborate: the press kits for The Lost Tapes II clearly define the songs featured on this compilation as having come from the sessions for Hip Hop Is Dead, Untitled, Life Is Good, and Nasir (apparently he used every single track recorded for Distant Relatives?).

This is honestly the only time I've ever heard The Lost Tapes referred to as a "cult classic", but I guess it makes sense.

“You Mean the World to Me” is produced by Kanye West, which may lead ‘Ye stans to believe that this came from those Wyoming sessions that ultimately gave the world five projects within five weeks, all of varying degrees of quality. However, this song doesn’t come from Nasir, as it was leaked to a mixtape prior to 2010: instead, this Leroy Huston-sampling, low-key West instrumental follows a similar sonic path as Hip Hop Is Dead’s “Still Dreaming”, which is probably why it failed to make the final cut there. Nasir was also always planned to be fully produced by West, and this is the only song on this compilation to feature any involvement from that Trump-loving ostrich. Therefore, there are no Nasir outtakes on The Lost Tapes II. The labels lied to you. Commence your class action lawsuit… now.

Here’s the thing, though: “You Mean the World to Me” is kind of great. West was coming off of Late Registration, so his work behind the boards is more thoughtful and soulful than you’d characterize his recent efforts, and our host’s tale, in which he steals away someone’s girlfriend only to start questioning the stability of his new relationship, growing increasingly paranoid as a result, is insightful, detailed, and possibly his very best performance on this entire fucking project. The incessant Huston vocal sample Kanye works into the beat as an instrument unto itself is also rather catchy. Why couldn’t this song have appeared on Nasir instead of, oh, any of the tracks that actually made the cut?

15. QUEENSBRIDGE POLITICS

Here’s some proof that The Lost Tapes II isn’t simply a collection of vaulted tracks that failed to make any of our host’s proper albums. You see, “Queensbridge Politics” is about his the untimely passing of Prodigy (of Mobb Deep) hasn’t healed any of the wounds suffered by those in his projects: there’s still a lot of bad blood, as witnessed in the repeated attempts at defacing the mural painted in his honor. Cellblock P burned a lot of bridges when he published his autobiography, and Nas isn’t immune: he even admits that they weren’t quite cool with one another, but they were working on mending that fence prior to his death. That’s an interesting take for a rapper to have on a song, one that could have portrayed him as the aggressor if done poorly, and it’s even more relevant given the fact that Nas actually had a working relationship with Prodigy. But here’s the thing: P passed in 2017, and Nas’s last album at the time, Life Is Good, hit store shelves in 2012. His next project, 2018’s Nasir, was always intended to be fully produced by Kanye West. So “Queensbridge Politics” couldn’t have been cut from either album: rather, it has to be from whatever unreleased project our host was talking about on DJ Khaled’s “Nas Album Done”, right? Which means he recently (within the past year-and-a-half or so) got back in the studio with Peter Q. Rockefeller to record this very song. Hmm. Anyway, Nas sounds remorseful on here, which adds to the overall feel of the track, while Pete Rock’s instrumental is plain and dull, so even though our host’s ear for beats hasn’t improved at all in the ensuring years, at least his pen game is still fantastic when he’s actually trying.

16. BEAUTIFUL LIFE (FEAT. RAVAUGHN)

The Lost Tapes II ends with a song clearly dropped from Life Is Good, one which, hilariously, repeats the phrase “life is good” throughout, but with an outro that was obviously directed at his ex-wife Kelis, one that absolutely could have been used against him in a court of law, hence “Beautiful Life” living on Nas’s hard drive for a few additional years. No I.D.’s instrumental is fine, nothing special but not unpleasant, unlike RaVaughn’s vocals, which were truly unnecessary. Nas runs through the drama he was facing at the time of recording, but he always takes time to count his blessings, which is a pretty good way to set up a song such as this: focusing exclusively on the negativity would bog this motherfucker down. I tend to rag on Nas for never fully accepting the fact that the job he does is inherently ridiculous and that he should be enjoying it much more than he does, but at least he comes across as truly appreciative and grateful of his “Beautiful Life” here, especially when it comes to his children. (Regardless of whatever the hell happened between he and Kelis and how I feel about it, I never doubted that he actually cared for his kids.) Not a bad way to end things, even if this one runs for two full minutes longer than it should.

THE LAST WORD: Just like that last song, this write-up has already run far too long, so let’s keep this brief: most of The Lost Tapes II should have remained lost. This is a compilation of tracks and not an “album”, of course, so it’s unfair to rate it as such, as cohesion is nothing but a fantasy here, but even for what it is, most of this is crap. Nas has always had a difficult time choosing good instrumentals, but even with that caveat in mind, it’s honestly hard to imagine the man consciously choosing some of these beats: I mean, both Pete Rock productions are boring as shit, regardless of the words he records on top of them, and both RZA contributions sound like castoffs he wouldn’t have even bothered trying to sell to the likes of North Star. Pharrell and Swizz Beatz also tank their respective songs, and the offerings from the lesser-known names result in two of the absolute worst songs in Nas’s career that don’t appear on Nastradamus: “Jarreau of Rap (Skatt Attack)” and “Who Are You”. However, when it comes to the actual bars, at times Nas sounds inspired, whether he’s talking about the late Prodigy, detailing the paranoia that is threatening to overtake his mind, or speaking honestly about his divorce (which doesn’t happen often enough, but again, this isn’t a proper album). The Lost Tapes II sees its quality increase substantially when the Kanye West-produced “You Mean the World to Me” kicks in, maintaining that consistency for the rest of the album (even through Pete’s shitty treat on “Queensbridge Politics” – Nas carries that song lyrically). Absolutely none of these songs belonged on any of his previous albums, and none of this is required listening unless you’re a Nas stan who feels the man can do no wrong, even when he’s doing wrong right in front of your fucking ears. The original Lost Tapes has its fans, but I’ll honestly be surprised if The Lost Tapes II survives in conversation even a week from today. Let this one go past – Nas didn’t even like the songs originally, so why should you?

-Max

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