My Gut Reaction: Nas - King's Disease (August 21, 2020)

King’s Disease is the thirteenth solo project from Nasir Jones, not counting group efforts or compilations of so-called “lost” recordings, but, surprisingly, it doesn’t really feel like a product coming from an artist who has spent more than half his life in the rap game. There’s an strange feeling I have after having listened to it in its entirely (after multiple false starts, sue me) prior to writing this paragraph. It… feels kind of optimistic? I know, I can’t explain it either, and yet I’m about to do so thoroughly right after you click through to read this write-up.

King’s Disease follows 2018’s poorly-received Nasir, which remains notable for being one of five projects Kanye West recorded and released within a five-week period. As he was merely a performer at the circus and not the main attraction, Nas lost himself within Nasir’s seven tracks, a rushed project (by his own admission) that failed to resonate with whatever base Ye’s involvement would have theoretically delivered him to, and alienated him from his own core fans who saw right through the façade. And yet there are still people online who swear that Nasir is brilliant: don’t listen to them. I liked one or two of the tracks well enough when I was writing my review, but I honestly, literally, and legitimately haven’t listened to a single goddamn note of Nasir since then, and I have no plans to do so in the future (unless I decide to put together a Producers Guild mix of terrible Kanye productions, maybe).

King’s Disease is the Queensbridge emcee’s attempt to right the ship, to do right by his fans while still trying to attract a larger audience, since as an artist, while successful using any and all metrics available, Nas has never attracted the type of blockbuster sales figures as some of his peers, East Coast or otherwise (*cough* Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G., etc. *cough*). To achieve this, Nasir teamed up with rapper-slash-producer Chauncey “Hit-Boy” Hollis, a dude who’s managed to score many hits throughout his relatively short career for the likes of Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, Big Sean, Travis $cott, and, well looky here, Jay-Z and Kanye West, and yet he’s always kept a foot planted firmly in the underground, releasing lesser-known projects for whatever 2020’s equivalent of “backpackers” has evolved into. In theory, Hit-Boy’s faster-paced, energetic instrumentals would seem to be a poor fit for our host’s matter-of-fact, take-no-shit cadence, but sometimes a clash of personality is necessary to facilitate art, and besides, Nas isn’t accepting calls from producers such as Large Professor, Pete Rock, or DJ Premier today anyway. (You know, the ones older heads say they want to collaborate with Nas again, even if that means our host is forced to regress to an earlier model he no longer has anything in common with.)

King’s Disease was announced via social media (naturally) less than two weeks before its release, with its first single, “Ultra Black”, dropping one week prior to the full project. This gave heads not a whole lot of time to wrap their minds around what a Nas and Hit-Boy collaboration could potentially sound like, which led to another weird feeling, at least for me: zero expectations. I had zero expectations when it came to an album by fucking Nas. That hasn’t happened since, like, ever?

1. KING’S DISEASE
The opening salvo from King’s Disease is its title track, a rap album intro in name only due to its appearance in the first slot in the tracklist, as Nasir actually raps here. And boy oh boy, is it a weird performance: over Hit-Boy’s soul loop with its life-support drums, our host spits a single verse chastising his peers while proclaiming his perceived dominance over this here rap game, and he sounds… well, not exactly energetic, but at least passionate enough for his bars to stumble out of his mouth, sentences split up in bizarre ways so as to accentuate how his investment in this particular project has resulted in a Nas excitable enough to slip up and drop the veneer of lyrical perfection. So like I said, weird. Nas usually isn’t this messy with his vocals: either this was recorded in a rush, or he’s actively trying to show some form of emotion on King’s Disease, and we’re not nearly far enough into the album to claim the former just yet. Nasir Jones is on his proselytizing shit, hoping to attract listeners to his congregation with thoughts such as, “’Amazing Grace’, I’m aging gracefully / Without masonry I made more paper to play with,” and, “You should want every brother to make it out / But brothers want trophies, they troll for clout.” (Although he does follow that last example with, “Rap is weird, weird flex, but okay,” which has a “see? I know how to turn on the Tweetbirds, too!”-type energy.) He does admit that there isn’t any rap music in his playlist, which means every single guest feature on this album not coming from members of The Firm are merely schemes to gain more sales/streams from fans of Lil Durk or A$AP Ferg, because if he doesn’t listen to hip hop, the fuck would he even know who these guys are? While I most likely won’t listen to this intro ever again, he sounds much more pumped to be here than on Ignored Oregon Project, which is a pleasant surprise.

2. BLUE BENZ
Hit-Boy throws a bunch of ideas at his collaborator, turning in an instrumental that adapts itself to the content switch when our host stops rapping about himself (for the most part – it’s not a perfect transition.) “Blue Benz” is pretty enjoyable, even with Nasir sounding a bit uncomfortable over the beat: it’s that discomfort that forces him to be in the moment, which oddly works for me. This isn’t the same guy I’ve shit all over during the lifespan of this blog for not understanding that his occupation is inherently silly and he may as well have some fun with it if he’s lucky enough to be successful at it: nah, this Nasir Jones is actively trying to engage the audience by keeping them awake, even managing to throw in what qualifies as a "joke" in the process (“That ‘made it up out the hood’ subject? I made you love it”). Lyrically, Nas is as unfocused as ever, though: after talking mad shit about his wealth and his alleged Uzi-in-his-army-jacket-lining bonafides (claiming “Chris Lighty let me in [to The Tunnel] a few times with nines”), he shifts gears to discuss a woman whose life doesn’t seem all that different from many others in the world (except for the fact that she drives the titular vehicle) before shouting-out the late Louie Rankin (his co-star in Belly, a fact underscored by a lengthy sound bite Hit-Boy drops into the track to separate the verses out). “Blue Benz” is entertaining, and Nas sounds invested in his performance, which is a nice plus, but I can’t help but wonder how this could have sounded had Hit-Boy given the beat to someone else.

3. CAR #85 (FEAT. CHARLIE WILSON)
Nasir’s quick ode to his younger days is much smoother than the man has been in motherfucking years: “Car #85” makes for good driving music, no question. Lyrically, our host is all over the place, as he tends to be in the present day as he doesn’t feel like he has to prove anything to anyone: while everything ultimately relates to the titular car service, his mind meanders down its path, but in a way that isn’t annoying, but more representative of the way one’s thoughts branch out at various impasses nonsensically. Hit-Boy’s beat still isn’t the best fit for our host, as evident by Nas’s bars running at an awkward clip as though he didn’t have any time to sit with the music and grow comfortable with it before he had to turn the album in, but it sounded enjoyable by itself, and once again boxing Nas into a sense of unease results in an entertaining song. The Gap Band’s Charlie Wilson is present, but while it’s nice to have him here he’s utterly wasted and unnecessary anyway, as Nas manages to carry his jumbled stories to the finish line successfully. Huh.

4. ULTRA BLACK (FEAT. HIT-BOY)
This first single from King’s Disease, released one week prior to the album as a whole, is a celebration of Black excellence and is possibly the happiest Nas has ever sounded on any of his songs where the subject matter isn’t about marrying Kelis. When I first listened to “Ultra Black” I walked away from it unimpressed, and now, within the context of King’s Disease, I’m still not all that thrilled about it, but my qualms lie with the instrumental and not Nasir’s performance, which is much more inviting than his usual calculating observational style, the one that keeps the listener at arm’s length. A lot of virtual ink has already been spilled about “Ultra Black”, so I won’t spend all that much time on it today, but I have to say that the alleged Doja Cat dis is kind of a reach, since it could simply be read as though Nas were stating a fact about her biological makeup for the sake of the rhyme, but it could also legit be an attack, in which case, that’s strange – he took forever to respond to the allegations by his now ex-wife Kelis, but goes after (the rather problematic, let’s be real) Doja Cat unprovoked? That doesn’t seem like the Nas we’ve all been following since the mid-1990s. He’s much more careful about that kind of shit, and I don’t believe he’d use collaborating with Hit-Boy as an excuse to suddenly become lazy with his pen. I still can’t get behind the music here (“Hit-Boy on the beat, this shit supposed to slap”? Um, nah), but the performance itself was fine, even with the cheesy concluding bar that, to me, has echoes of the way that Tommy Lee Jones flick Volcano ended. And if you know what I’m talking about there, the line starts in the back for the cookie you’ve been promised.

5. 27 SUMMERS
“27 Summers”, named after the number of hot seasons between our host’s debut album and King’s Disease, is a brief one-verse wonder, and yet Nas managed to find a way to squeeze both a chorus and a bridge into this bitch, which makes it feel too bloated even though the final product runs for less than two minutes overall. Hit-Boy brings in some moody trap for Nasir to spit to, and as expected when it comes to that particular sound, Nas sounds terrible, running through his bars at a clip unsustainable for long periods of time, as though he were intimidated by the beat, which was okay otherwise. Jay-Z could have made this one work, I’m just saying. If “Ultra Black” was a celebration of Black excellence, “27 Summers” centers all of that praise onto Nas alone, as he sifts through boasts-n-bullshit coasting on his wealth, his connections, and his new business ventures, and none of that makes for a full-on song that anyone should ever want to listen to. An interlude, maybe, if I’m being extra-forgiving that day. But not a song. Let’s skip past this one with the quickness, shall we?

6. REPLACE ME (FEAT. BIG SEAN & DON TOLIVER)
That guest list will hardly be interesting to anyone that has followed Nas’s career over the past twenty-seven summers, but fret not: “Replace Me” is so terrible that you don’t have to feel bad about not giving a fuck about it. I mean, “Replace Me” is a song about where three different men tell their respective lady friends that they’ll never find better partners than they, and yet none of their lyrics manage to convince the opposite sex in the least bit. Nasir Jones refers to himself as “Mr. ‘Oochie Wally’” here as some kind of positive trait: that should be all you need to read to form your own opinion, but I have some other examples of hilarious awfulness which I’ll bring out as we go along. Motown’s own Big Sean possesses one of those rap names, careers, and general demeanors where seeing his name on the guest list likely made you feel some type of way about King’s Disease as a whole, but he did manage to sound pretty good on the Hit-Boy-produced “Clique” way back when, so his presence here isn’t entirely unjustified. His verse is, though: “I’m not your ex, I’m your ecstasy,” made me roll the entire goddamn planet around my head just so my eyes could take a break. Houston artist Don Toliver, who performs the hook, is a name a lot of the kids will maybe recognize, but he doesn’t take advantage of his prime placement on this high-profile project: out of his smarmy mouth, “It’s getting’ kinda hard to replace me / So don’t go lookin’ for nobody else,” sounds more like a challenge bestowed upon his lady friend than a plea for maintaining the status quo in the relationship. The production is also, again, a poor fit for Esco, except this time around his bars are so laughably bad that there would be no salvaging this even if it were remixed by boom bap Jesus. This was awful.

7. TIL THE WAR IS WON (FEAT. LIL DURK)
Nasir presents an ode to single mothers, specifically Black single mothers, but, of course, can’t manage to do so without presenting conflicting thoughts and emotions, which muddies the water quite a bit. “Let’s dismantle that ‘it’s a man you lack [stuff]’ / You don’t need us, you could handle that,” he says near the beginning of the subdued Hit-Boy production, but by the end he’s begging, “Woman, stop chasing your man away,” which, huh? I get that what he’s likely trying to say is that, while he loves and respects single mothers, they shouldn’t be so quick to reject help from their prospective partners, but if there were partners involved in the kids’ lives, then they wouldn’t be single mothers by the strictest definition, right? This is giving me a headache. Also giving me a headache: the vocals from Chicago artist Lil Durk, which sound like they were dragged through an Auto-Tuned hellscape (is it strange that the kids have absolutely no problem with Auto-Tuned vocals, and yet the generation before them pretty much ended T-Pain’s career for doing the exact same shit?) with only the barest minimum amount of thought given to the writing: sure, Durk says some sweet shit about his mother, but most of his verse is made up of the man rationalizing his place on the streets while claiming, “Black lives matter, I’m for real, it do matter,” which it does, but saying it with such a lack of passion is the equivalent of wearing a Black Lives Matter face mask in the booth while reciting these lyrics, where none of the listeners can actually see it so we don’t know just how much they matter to him. (Toward the end he also sing-raps, “Ooh, she independent” and “She don’t depend on no one,” essentially defining the word “independent” within the same fucking bar, which, what fourth-grader wrote these goddamn lyrics?) I’m prone to believing that Nas’s feelings here are genuine, and the man is no stranger to having a social consciousness, but the beat has zero energy and the choice of guest star (who was likely just hoisted upon him by the out-of-touch non-rap fans that run Def Jam Records, the label he’s still tied to even with his own Mass Appeal shingle hanging from the window here) makes me never want to listen to this bullshit ever again, please.

8. ALL BAD (FEAT. ANDERSON .PAAK)
This one’s actually pretty focused, circling exclusively around the idea that Nas is annoyed with how his relationship with a younger woman is going and fantasizes about the bachelor lifestyle he left behind, even if the idea of Nasir Jones “taking down some of the girls Drake and Future took down” makes you laugh your motherfucking ass off. He talks about problems communicating via text and being left on read, so as to reach the young’uns listening to this song because of Anderson .Paak’s presence, but the overall sentiment is relatable enough (even if none of us have ever been in a short-lived relationship with Nicki Minaj, whom this song may or may not be about), and he sounded fine over Hit-Boy’s instrumental, which still feels like it had been customized for a different artist. Paak, for his part, croons and raps amiably, taking Nas’s ball and running with it (“Damn, I love it when you talk crazy / But who the fuck you think you talking to?”, a couplet delivered at the very end of the track, is a very concise reduction of the bipolar elements in many a May-December romance) while not doing much else. “All Bad” isn’t my favorite song or anything, nor will it be yours unless you also just broke up with Nicki, but you certainly wouldn’t skip past it if it popped up again.

9. THE DEFINITION (FEAT. BRUCIE B.)
A one-verse wonder (the guest, DJ Brucie B, only provides bookends) where our host runs down a list of legitimate issues our country (and the world) is facing, including indirect swipes at the current administration (what, is Nas, the guy who attached Fox News on a track back in the day, suddenly too good to say “Fuck Trump”?); attacks on the legacy of Black men; and even global warning gets its moment in the sun (no pun intended), and yet he offers nothing in the way of solution: instead, he lumps all of these concerns together and then talks about what he calls “King’s Disease” (or “Rich Man’s Disease”, which he gives no definition for but then mentions gout? The fuck wants to listen to a rap song where the artist mentions how to prevent gout? Why is that now a thing? That’s two minutes that I’ll never get back.

10. FULL CIRCLE (FEAT. AZ, FOXY BROWN, & CORMEGA)
The back cover art designs released online for King’s Disease list the features on “Full Circle” as “The Firm, AZ, Foxy Brown, and Cormega”, which I fucking refuse to do because that looks dumb as shit: unless Esco convinced Jimmy Page’s other band The Firm (you know, the reason why Nas and company couldn’t legally just attribute their lone album to ‘The Firm’) to contribute musically to this track, there’s no need to credit the group and then each member individually, unless the graphic designer was a sneaky fuck that charged by the goddamn letter. Anyway, for those of you two who may not be familiar, The Firm was a hip hop supergroup formed by Nas and his coterie of ne’er-do-wells AZ, Foxy Brown, and Cormega, all of whom were gifted in taking advantage of the Mafioso hip hop scene back in the late 1990’s, and their debut album was released by Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Recordings label in 1997, except by that point Mega had been replaced by Nature and Dre didn’t do anything to market the project, so it’s generally considered a failure. The group quietly disbanded and haven’t really worked together since… until now, I guess. On “Full Circle”, Nas and Hit-Boy bring the original lineup back together, even managing to sneak Dr. Dre in through the rear entrance for a wholly unnecessary song outro as though he weren’t part of the reason their album tanked. (Poor Nature, though. Was he really that busy?) Over nonchalant Hit-Boy production that just flat-out doesn’t hit hard in any way, Nas, AZ, and Mega ditch their usual crew subject matter to discuss their various relationships with women in vague terms, while Foxy… spits crime shit, having clearly been left out of the group text chain. Her vocals seem to have been recorded differently from the rest of the participants, as well: I understand her temporary hearing loss has permanently affected her flow (delivered with a voice which was once one of the best in the game, let’s not lie to ourselves), but that doesn’t excuse how her verse sounds as though it were pulled straight from a Zoom meeting and never mastered. She sounds out of place here, and it isn’t her fault. There’s probably a comment I could make here about our host subconsciously sabotaging Foxy Brown so that he and his new old friends Mega and a motherfucking rejuvenated AZ (why does he only sound fantastic on other people’s songs these days?) would stand out more, but I won’t do it, that’s too elementary an observation for me. But I will say that “Full Circle” sucks as presented on King’s Disease: somebody show this track some mercy and remix it with a better beat, please, for the love of all that is holy.

11. 10 POINTS
I’m not clicking back through to double-check, as that would defeat the purpose of a Gut Reaction post, but I believe “10 Points” represents the first time an instrumental is allowed time to breathe and close out the audio track on its own, as opposed to violently cutting off once Nasir is done speaking. Weird. Anywhatever, “10 Points” houses three solid Nas verses, an annoying-as-shit hook (which, at one point, becomes weirdly misogynistic), our host referencing one of his own songs (but not one that anybody will give a fuck about), and a Hit-Boy beat that is so engaging, one which grows on you as it ages, that you’ll be glad that the music is allowed a chance to shine at the end. Nasir starting off nearly every bar during the hook with “King” becomes tedious with each iteration, and I don’t know about you, but “Nas’s Angels (The Flyest)”, quite possibly the lone Neptunes collaboration a solo Esco has under his belt (unless I’m forgetting something, which, in all probability, I might be), wasn’t a good enough song for anybody to remember that his habit of saying “Peace King” during his tracks began there, and the way he throws in, “Queen, gotta learn to let it go and move forward” sounds judgmental and awfully sexist, a stark contrast to when he says the same sentence elsewhere beginning with the word “King”, which he just tosses aside as a bit of advice. It’s worthy of a side-eye, is what I’m saying, but it’s not like there isn’t an inherent misogynistic streak within our chosen genre. Nas’s three verses, again, are pretty solid, though: for once, he sounds fully comfortable with the music, and his flow isn’t affected by Hit-Boy’s musical hurdles one bit. If this were one long verse with no hook to speak of, I’d easily add it to a Nas playlist without hesitation, but the way it comes prepackaged, it’s preachy as shit and I’ve long since outgrown Nas’s holier-than-thou image. (EDIT: I've been informed that the song he's actually referencing is actually just called "The Flyest" off of Stillmatic, an album I absolutely haven't listened to anything off of since writing about it last, regardless of its AZ feature, so the question you should be asking yourselves is, "Why in the fuck was he thinking of that Neptunes song?")

12. THE CURE
The King’s Disease finale is “The Cure”, where Nas uses a subdued instrumental (technically two here, I suppose) to talk about his career and his place within the hip hop pantheon, and I have to say, it’s pretty good. Hit-Boy’s musical backing, which shifts during a brief interlude in the middle of the song, actually sounds like he made it with Nas in mind, and, in turn, our host flows effortlessly over it, point out hypocrisies in other rappers within the medium who sold out (bars which could easily be turned upon himself, which is kind of the point) while rationalizing the evolution of an artist. “Cuban link QB chain belong in the MoMA,” is just a hot-ass line, let’s be real. And “Still going deeper like I grew a new inch on my dick,” is some unexpected comedy from our host. Is he actually (gasp!) enjoying himself here? Maybe just a little bit: he still doesn’t take criticism all that well (“They said they want the old Nas back / Play the Clue tapes for old verses,” he says, borrowing a similar Jay-Z sentiment while refusing to look backwards in life), but he’s learning, and this deep into his career, the fact that he’s actually trying is commendable.

King’s Disease ends its evening with a bonus track.

13. SPICY (FEAT. A$AP FERG & FIVIO FOREIGN)
That guest list looks fucking terrible, and that’s coming from a guy who doesn’t usually have an issue with A$AP Ferguson. Hit-Boy’s instrumental discharges all of the energy that had been withheld throughout the previous twelve tracks, so it makes perfect sense why this wasn’t a part of King’s Disease proper: it just wouldn’t fit in anywhere. Also, why in the hell is this shit called “Spicy” when Nas clearly uses the word “pricy” much more often? Anyway, “Spicy” is bad: Nas sounds completely dumbfounded by the instrumental, resorting to spitting non-spicy boasts-n-bullshit instead of anything a listener could care about, and Ferg’s closing stanza is a nonstarter as well. But it’s Brooklyn rapper Maxie “Fivio Foreign” Ryles’s middle verse that will make you angry as it is godawful, a wasted placement that pretty much every fucking rapper in existence would have slaughtered their own family for. “Every bitch you with look like a dyke”? What in the godforsaken fuck? I know this year has been a consistent high-key dumpster fire, but is this still 2020 we’re living in? “If she tell me ‘no’, I’m gettin’ tight”? Should we all just preemptively #MeToo Fivio Foreign right now just because? Also note that at no point during “Spicy” does Nas make any reference to his collaborators on the track (although he does mention Bobby Shmurda on some “How are you doing, fellow kids?”-type shit), so it’s obvious Fergie and Fivio were tacked on well after Nas had moved on to his next obsession, and while I’m sure they feel great for appearing on King’s Disease (I mean, not even A$AP Rocky has managed to pop up on a Nas album yet), if this is the best they could come up with, Hit-Boy should have set his hard drive on fire to cleanse it of evil spirits. Ugh.

THE LAST WORD: Look, King’s Disease isn’t perfect, nor would I refer to it as “great”: I have issues with some of Hit-Boy’s musical choices, Nasir's incessant need to chase relevancy into the crowd of preteens that take up valuable real estate on hip hop social media, and the selection of guest stars (aside from AZ, who sounded fucking fantastic) evoked a range of emotion for me, from “meh” to “what in the flying fuck is this garbage?”. But ultimately King’s Disease is Nas’s best project since 2012’s Life Is Good, which was another album that I enjoyed but didn’t find to be perfect. I will say that it helps to go into this with lowered expectations, though: heads expecting a calculating, precise Nasir Jones will be disappointed, whereas those of us who walked into the room not expecting anything from a man who has nothing to prove to anybody anymore will discover that Nas actually sounds like he’s having fun behind the mic for the first time in his fucking career. It’s uncanny: Hit-Boy’s often-mismatched instrumentals, which would have sounded fine, if a bit boring, had they been placed with other rappers, trigger a joyful response from our host, and that is contagious. Older heads may be too hard on King’s Disease since the perception of Nas as an artist hasn’t had any correlation with the reality of Nas as an artist for almost two fucking decades at this point, and I admit, I wasn’t sure what to expect knowing what some of Hit-Boy’s better-known beats sounded like. But if Nas is capable of releasing a collection of songs such as this, then all the rules have officially been thrown out the window because he’s finally done it: he’s having fun. He’s having fun at his job.

Again, some of the musical choices and nearly every single fucking cameo makes this not a perfect release for me: if I had to rank stuff, which I’m loathe to do, right now I’d put this at maybe fifth overall? But the point is that feeling uncomfortable has made Nasir Jones sound his most relatable in ages. I can’t guarantee that I’ll still be listening to this one in a year, in a month, hell, even in a week, but it was enjoyable enough and I recommend that everyone give it a spin.

Now then, what other out-of-place producer could we get to jolt our host into delivering more entertaining songs? Kutmasta Kurt? Evidence? El-P? Eminem? (I’m totally kidding about that last one.) Let me know your ideas below.

-Max

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