The American pop culture dictionary is an expansive text, one that is ambiguous and imaginary and must be changed each day. Slang comes and goes seasonally. Those of us under the age of 25 do our best to keep up while our parents sit around day-trading and mumbling about how we'll get over it. Miraculously, there remain terms in even the most recent editions of the vernacular Merriam-Webster that are ill-defined and misused -- terms like 'artist.' People who like lattes ponder what constitutes art. MTV, Rolling Stone and Señor Grammy hand out artist of the year trophies. And, lately, every hip-hop musician with a Range Rover considers himself to be a rap artist. Misnomers, misnomers, misnomers.
Nas' latest album, "Nastradamus," exhibits what his records have lacked since he released his first disc, "Illmatic," and what most of the winners of those golden gramophones are starved of as well: artistry.
Nas' lyrics, as consistent and striking as his album covers, have seldom faltered since he stormed out of Queensbridge in 1994. What has broken down, however, is Nas' total package. He now insists on singing his own choruses and, while his rasp is Brando-esque and pleasing during the verses, Nas is not as smooth as Maxwell.
The Nas of old had choruses littered with samples, scratches and alternate voices supplied by the likes of AZ and Q-tip. Those hooks delivered an aesthetic change-up; a needed respite from the onslaught of New York's most refined verbal wizard. Nas has now reached the point where he is whispering trivialities like "kill, kill, kill / murder, murder, murder" as he does for the chorus on "Shoot 'Em Up," a Havoc-produced track where the beat, for the first time in Nas history, outdoes the rapping.
Even in a genre such as rap -- arguably one of the more simplistic pop music forms, and certainly one more concerned with the lyrical content than the subordinate musicality -- structural shortcomings such as these ineffective hooks tear songs apart. Nas, gifted and talented to no end, simply gets in his own way.
Unfortunately for critics, it is difficult not to lay the praise down on Mr. Escobar based purely on his skills. Nas brings just enough outstanding songs, three to be exact, and barely enough bad songs that have outstanding lyrics to have the whole block asking the kid with the 500-mHz Pentium III to burn them a copy.
The combination of his ghetto specifics ("perishin' / brain-dead from an Erickson), and his detailed recounting of thug encounters ("Now he wantin' mine / Reachin' for my nine / Aimin' with our guns at each other's face at the same time") make the tabooed, criminal lifestyle that the general population fears and simultaneously dreams of frighteningly accessible.
On "Nastradamus," the title track and first single, there is a standard L.E.S. beat, coupled with Nas' prototype mixture of lavish life and gun-toting: "jewelry, cars and jeeps is my motto / 4-5's with the hollows / silencers on the nozzel." The chorus though, as is the case on "Some of Us Have Angels," and "Quiet N--," featuring a rotten guest appearance by the Bravehearts, is irritating.
The highlights, not surprisingly, come when Nas teams up with other acclaimed musicians. "Come Get Me," the seemingly requisite DJ Premier-produced song always manages to be the best song on any given album. "Project Window," the long-awaited union of Nas and Ron Isley of the Isley Brothers, display what Nas should be doing every time he enters the studio to put together a new track -- isolating himself from the rest of the music so he shines as bright as possible when he grabs the mic.
Rapping, not singing, song-writing or executive producing, is the artform Nas has mastered. And, until he figures out how to again focus the emphasis on his strength, his albums will bow down to his original masterpiece.
Grade: B
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