Hip-hop is supposedly pop music's most fickle genre, one where second chances come around as often as hit singles from Craig Mack. The actual truth is that if you make a hot first album, you will be making records for a long enough time to endure releasing some real crap.
No artist has benefited more from this line of thought than Nas. Since the untouchable "Illmatic," he's created the least-loved discography this side of post-Diamond Dave Van Halen, but the nadir had to be last year's "Oochie Wally." Even with a beat that could have made the guy sitting next to you famous, Nas dropped lines clunkier than his dinner-plate medallion: "Who wants to be a millionaire? / But my name ain't Regis / Nas the one they call when they want they thang beat up."
With his career on its last lifeline, Nas uses a remarkable strategy to revive it: he cares again. "Stillmatic" is the first Nas album title that won't automatically be followed by "really sucks compared to 'Illmatic.'" It isn't the only thing that brings back memories of '94: on the surface, you have beats supplied by the much-missed Large Professor as well as DJ Premier, and a track where the otherwise forgettable AZ sounds like the second coming of Rakim.
But the soul of the album is the fact that Nas sounds like he really tried this time. And this helps him on some of the spottier tracks on "Stillmatic." It was only a matter of time before someone sampled "The Sopranos'" theme song, but "Got Ur Self A..." joins "Nas Is Like" as the most inspired post-"Illmatic" singles.
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The decision to have no-name Amerie butcher Tears For Fears in the chorus of "Rule" must have been made on the casting couch, but it's a lot more tolerable than Nas' singing in "Smokin'," which the public will not be ready for even in a year that saw "I'm Real" become its biggest hit. At least a Young Guns II reference salvages the former.
In the intro, Nas swears "it's always forward I'm moving / never backward, stupid." But "Stillmatic's" centerpiece is the reflective "2nd Childhood," with a DJ Premier beat that you could pour on your mashed potatoes. Nas waxes nostalgic over his own childhood and the perpetual one endured by a 31-year-old ex-convict still living at home ("broke his momma's furniture watching 'ComicView'") and an aging party girl who's "yakkety-yakking like she was twelve."
It's the first time since Ahmad's "Back In The Day" that a rapper has reminisced with such humor and heart. It's also the first time I could use the word wistful to describe a hip-hop track.
Most of "Stillmatic" is just as essential, and it's not just because it includes the only recorded evidence of praise for Ma$e (you reading, Smithsonian?). A soldier and an inmate have a powerful conspiracy theory pity- party in "My Country." And how about Nas getting all "Memento" on us in "Rewind," telling a story backwards where his enemy yells: "shoot don't please!"
The first two verses of "One Mic" find Nas gradually building up steam until he busts through the claustrophobia like Kool-Aid Man through brick. But here's the real genius: in the last verse: He actually reverses it, eventually exhausting from some his most claustrophobic lyrics.
Sadly, Nas thanks the five people who dug "Nastradamus" by having Swizz Beatz and Mary J. Blige bump heads in "Braveheart Party," which conveniently serves as one-stop shopping for everything that sucks about 21st century rap. If nothing else, we see the charitable side of Nas, as the inevitable "Braveheart" solo drop continues to be the least-anticipated rap album since the glory days of David Faustino and Brian Austin Green.
And if I remember correctly, I believe Nas and Jay-Z had a few issues, right? Jay-Z's "Takeover" was as quick and precise as a sniper's hit, not even finding time to expose the fact that Nas ghost-wrote "Getting Jiggy With It."
Nas' response, "Ether," is an ugly, yet morbidly fascinating bludgeoning that resembles a beatdown with a sack full of doorknobs. Some of the Jigga-baiting comes correct ("How much of Biggie's rhymes gonna come out your fat lips?"). However, Nas doesn't let anything as trivial as a song structure get in the way of making crystal clear what in a sad way becomes his main point: Jay-Z has sex with men.
In the middle of Side 2's polemics, Nas does some ill-timed bashing of Dubya, telling him to look in the mirror before he tries to solve the world's problems. Nas takes his own advice on "Stillmatic," and cleans house by offering very unpopular politics (ROTC - avoid "My Country" at all costs), little concession to R&B and a middle finger to his entire hood (geez, even Prodigy) in "Destroy & Rebuild." That would have been a great album title.
You can hate Nas now - but this time it won't be because he screwed you out of $18.99 by dropping something that only made you like "Illmatic" more.
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