We Need to Talk About Nas

 

This coming Friday marks the release of the twelfth solo full-length from Nasir “Nas” Jones, the ridiculously-titled King’s Disease. An album-length collaboration with the producer-slash-rapper Chauncey “Hit-Boy” Hollis, King’s Disease is Nasir’s latest attempt at trying to branch out both his sound and his audience while continuing to ignore the cries and pleas of his longtime fans. Indeed, while I am all for the concept of an artist growing and evolving, never becoming complacent or stagnant, I agree that Nas is quite skilled at hearing what his fans actually want from him and not just subverting those expectations, but blatantly dragging them along with the flimsiest thread of hope, as though he truly believes that his day ones would never abandon their rhyming hero, regardless of the distractions he throws in their path.

To wit: many many many moons ago Nas promised a full-length collaboration with DJ Premier, the legendary boom bap producer behind some of the best songs from his first few albums. Putting aside the fact that such a project would never come close to sounding good today (as it couldn’t ever reach the lofty expectations that many of you two have likely set after reading the first sentence in this paragraph), it doesn’t even seem like Nasir fucks with Preemo like that anymore, so that dream has been deferred. Hip hop heads also want Nas to work with producers he’s had a good track record with, names such as Large Professor, Pete Rock, Salaam Remi, Q-Tip, and the like (essentially trying to get the Illmatic gang back together for one last score, save for Remi, of course), but he shows almost zero interest in doing so, which I both understand and am baffled by, since hearing that Nas is working with, say, Pete Rock guarantees immediate interest in whatever project those two are working on. Instead, Nas’s most recent Pete Rock collaborations were thrown away on the horrifically shitty compilation The Lost Tapes 2, drops of water flicked toward thirsty heads dying of nostalgia, and as for the rest, welp, Nas has no desire to revisit Illmatic, even though his debut remains the main reason he’s held in such high regard to this day. (Had It Was Written been his debut, I strongly doubt Nasir Jones would have received as much critical acclaim as he has, and that isn’t a knock on It Was Written, even though you’re right to be wary that it could be.)

Again, I get it: nobody wants to keep doing the same shit over and over again, but what he’s presented as an alternative has left me scratching my head, and yours too, and again, sorry about scratching your head like that. At one point he threatened the culture with a collaborative project alongside Swizz Beatz, which likely stirred up just as much interest amongst his diehards as the proposed Preemo pitch, as it currently sits locked away on a hard drive with no scheduled release date. Allegedly The RZA had something going with Nasir as well, but based on the two tracks that appeared on The Lost Tapes 2, it’s better off that we never hear those songs, I feel. And as for collaborations we’ve actually received throughout the man’s career, Nas has gifted us all with the supergroup The Firm (disappointing, and with far less Dr. Dre involvement than originally promised); Distant Relatives, his album with Damien Marley; and Nasir, a seven-track “album” fully produced by Kanye West that failed to hit every single goddamn mark. (Legend has it that Nasir is what replaced the Swizz Beatz project on the schedule, but I’m not going to thank Kanye fucking West for that – would you?) And now King’s Disease, running alongside Hit-Boy, a man who has some actual hits under his belt (which he’d better, or else his moniker would be more ironic than anything else) but is largely unproven with an artist of Nas’s caliber steering the vehicle.

While Nas may never find that commercial relevance he’s so obviously seeking (while he’s sold many copies of his respective albums, he’s never had the blockbuster success some of his peers have enjoyed), we should be placated by the mere fact that he’s still out here trying, unwilling to rest on his laurels as an artist generally considered by many to be one of the best rappers alive. Collaborators such as Kanye West and Hit-Boy divert him from the path many of us had created for him during our fantasy football drafts, however. I realize that, as of this writing, we haven’t even heard King’s Disease so it makes no sense for me to make such a broad generalization (I have listened to the first single, “Ultra Black”, and was not impressed, if that means anything to you), but I still believe the question is worth asking:

Hey armchair A&R’s, who would you rather Nas collaborate with for a full-length project in the future?

In the past my response would have been Salaam Remi, final answer, no hesitation, but these days I’m more wary, especially after his beats on Black Thought’s Streams of Thought Volume 2 were all roundly disappointing and unmemorable. Today I lean more toward a Black Milk or Quelle Chris type, someone who can twist their respective samples around in a way to draw passion and dominance out of Nasir, who has sounded very bored during his songs for quite a while now. Those two names also lean heavily into his transparent need to not revisit his past, which is why I didn’t just say Extra P or Q-Tip.

Let’s get a discussion going before the inevitable review of King’s Disease (which won’t run next week – I already have something planned – but will come pretty soon). What say you?

-Max