REVIEW | NAS ‘NASIR’ ALBUM PRODUCED BY KANYE WEST

We have finally been graced with the highly anti­cip­ated elev­enth stu­dio album from Nas, simply entitled, ‘Nas­ir’. Expect­a­tions were high and no one knew in which dir­ec­tion he would take his music in at this point in his career, we were excited. The album was released fol­low­ing a listen­ing party in no oth­er than Queens, New York where his writ­ing was birthed. Pay­ing homage to his humble begin­nings, Nas has always shown love to where he came from — Queensbridge.

Exclus­ively pro­duced by Kanye West, the album has been received with great con­tro­versy and mixed feel­ings around the unlikely par­ing. Kanye pub­licly stated his thoughts, ‘slavery was a choice’. Some­how this notion seems to go against everything Nas has ever stood for, but he has always been an enigma of con­tra­dic­tion and con­tro­versy, his unpre­dict­ab­il­ity is refresh­ing and we will nev­er know exactly what he was think­ing it was prob­ably a very stra­tegic move. If you listen to this album with an open mind, it’s clear work­ing with Kanye has not affected the integ­rity of his lyr­ics nor have the beats dis­trac­ted focus from his mes­sage. The pro­duc­tion by Kanye West is lav­ish, some tracks have a grand atmo­spher­ic feel to them with gran­di­ose orches­tra sounds, it almost feels like cine­ma­to­graph dir­ec­tion to com­pli­ment Nas’ icon­ic vivid descript­ive verses.

Con­sist­ing of only sev­en tracks, with Nas it’s all about qual­ity and not quant­ity, sev­er­al of his lines have mul­tiple mean­ings which could leave you pon­der­ing for hours try­ing to fig­ure out which way he meant it, only to real­ize it works all ways, for this reas­on his tracks are some­thing to be savored. Sim­ul­tan­eously I can’t blame rap fans for want­ing more tracks from an artist who brings con­scious thought in this new age of mumble rap and non­sensic­al language.

Nas has grown expo­nen­tially in the six years since his last album, both on a per­son­al and busi­ness level. His career extends bey­ond music not only to spon­sor­ship deals, mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar invest­ments and com­munity pro­jects but also his fel­low­ship at Har­vard. A nice touch which cel­eb­rates the extent of his suc­cess is that this album is released on his own record label – Mass Appeal. He has come a long way. This is reflec­ted on this album, still clas­sic Nas but older and wiser, still address­ing those top­ics which really mat­ter. Nas’ laid­back reflect­ive approach may be inter­preted as ‘lazy’ by some how­ever I feel that it is just his mind­ful­ness in his obser­va­tion of chan­ging times and stay­ing calm amidst chal­len­ging situ­ations. Per­haps this is why he has not dir­ectly addressed alleg­a­tions from his ex-wife Kel­is, in order to main­tain focus on his over­arch­ing mes­sage. Or he may not feel that it is neces­sary to fuel the fire. Sadly, this album has come under much scru­tiny for Nas’ the lack of response, I per­son­ally do not feel an album is the place to address that, and many review­ers for­get alleg­a­tions require evid­ence to be veri­fied. Keep­ing to a pro­fes­sion­al review of his music and mas­ter lyr­i­cism, there are how­ever sev­er­al lines which could be inter­preted as his dis­tant com­ment­ary if you listen closely.

Straight into ‘Not for the radio’, we already know this is going to be against main­stream opin­ion and taboo sub­jects, ‘Colom­bi­ans made crack, the gov­ern­ment made stacks’ a men­tion of how Amer­ic­an soci­ety made money from drug sales at the price of des­troy­ing com­munit­ies. Heavy with polit­ic­al and his­tor­ic­al ref­er­ences, dis­cuss­ing plights of the black man, as the hook sings ‘I think they scared of us’, imply­ing the power of know­ledge and empower­ment, it’s a power­ful track, it’s almost a call to arms of know­ledge. Feat. Puff Daddy it almost feels like a fol­low up to ‘Hate me Now’ with a sim­il­ar lar­ger than life sound, also refer­ring to ‘Esco­bar season’.

The album cov­er is an image taken by pho­to­journ­al­ist, Mary Ellen Mark depict­ing chil­dren with their hands above their heads, hold­ing up vari­ous objects includ­ing a toy gun against a wall, taken in South Dal­las where this com­munity has been des­troyed by crack addic­tion. We all know Nas is very vocal about the impro­vised state of black com­munit­ies in Amer­ica, we later real­ize this image visu­al­izes the images described in, ‘Cops shot the kid’ the second album track. Cre­at­ive sampling uses chilling screams of Richard Pry­or with samples from Slick Rick’s ‘Children’s story’, trans­formed into a beat, exhum­ing the mad­ness of the situ­ation. Nas addresses police bru­tal­ity spe­cific­ally that aimed at chil­dren from eth­nic minor­it­ies, ‘dis­ad­vant­ages of the brown’. This concept is smart, he is telling the present-day children’s story. Kanye has a strong verse on this and they seem to be in sync on their val­ues, ‘tell me who do we call to report crime when 911 doing the drive by’. It is not for the conservative.

‘White Label’ samples ‘Pris­on Song’ by Shahram Shabepareh, which in itself is a nice find from Per­sian funk genre, takes me back to look­ing around for Nas samples. A lot more per­son­al address­ing some of his demons, ‘Drinkin like Dean Mar­tin is noth­ing to me, the spir­its is some­thing I can’t part, and it’s fun to me’, I inter­pret this line as a double mean­ing, he is a spokes­per­son for Hen­nessy which is part of his busi­ness ven­tures he can’t part, but is also known to be a heavy drink­er and loves to party which is the dark­er side of the music industry. In this sense the ‘spir­its’ could mean demons which pos­sesses him. Kel­is stated they partied a lot which could have lead to the det­ri­ment of their mar­riage. This track tells us ‘The odds are what you love can kill you like a heart phys­i­cian who does from a heart attack’.  We are all vic­tims of our desires at times, imper­fect humans.

‘Bon­jour’ is suave and soph­ist­ic­ated, it sounds remin­is­cent of ‘Only an hour’ I get the same imagery of Nas ming­ling with the rich and power­ful in the south of France as a mem­ber of the millionaire’s boys club. I can’t help but think his vivid descrip­tions are not only walk in his shoes of liv­ing a lux­ury life­style in the form of a well deserved brag, but also doubles up to serve us as a vis­ion for our own selves as he rein­forces that we all have the same poten­tial to real­ize our vis­ions. Nas touches on his rela­tion­ships with women, ‘be care­ful who you get­ting preg­nant, that’s long term stress­ing’, an obvi­ous ref­er­ence to his rocky rela­tion­ship with ex-wife Kelis.

One of my per­son­al favor­ites from this album is, ‘Everything’ ‘If I could change any­thing, I would change, Everything’ which makes us reflect on how many issues we are facing in the world today. Urging us to ‘don’t think the same as every­one else’ and be dif­fer­ent, we are all unique and that should be cel­eb­rated, and that we should think out­side of the box and not fol­low the masses. Nas got to where he is today by fol­low­ing that philo­sophy, going against the grain he became a rich black man in a pre­dom­in­antly rich white envir­on­ment, ‘My first house, 11,000-square-feet man­sion, It was a haunted by dead rich whites, Mad a nigga bought his crib to hang up pic­tures of black Christ, Cir­cu­lar drive­ways, black cars and black ice’. We should be proud of who we are and that we shouldn’t change ourselves for the accept­ance of any­one else. Nas also ref­er­ences recent events where two black men had the police called on them for just wait­ing in Star­bucks, ‘If Star­bucks is bought by Nestle, please don’t arrest me/I need to use your restroom/And I ain’t buy no Espresso’. Anoth­er remind­er that racism does still exist, even if you are at the top, but that should not stop you doing your thing.

The concept of ‘Adam and Eve’ is geni­us, it of course con­tains Bib­lic­al ref­er­ences to the first man and woman on Earth who gave into tempta­tion. Once again Nas dis­cuss­ing his per­son­al demons and giv­ing into tempta­tion for his love of women. I loved this reverse miso­gyny line ‘They wanna fuck me, have me under their belt, slightly offen­ded, yeah that’s how I felt, that’s how it ended.’ he’s offen­ded women will only want to be with him because of his name and status, to tick them off their list, and he’s ‘slightly offen­ded’, this com­pletely throws all ideas that women are the only ones who can be objec­ti­fied. He then goes on to say, ‘I’m good at exist­ing, exis­ted in my truth, as long as I enjoy the fruit’ mean­ing the fruits of his labor are also the fruits of his sins and he’s going to enjoy everything he has worked hard for.

 

Nas addresses his leg­acy of longev­ity on ‘Simple Things’ his last track, as though longev­ity is an old friend and they go way back, a very clev­er present­a­tion of the concept, they have a built a rela­tion­ship and under­stand­ing of each oth­er. Des­pite a more chilled out vibe this track seems to be a mes­sage for his haters, but done in such a way that it’s almost like Nas is show­ing us he does not care what they think because his leg­acy speaks for itself and he has noth­ing to worry about. ‘Nev­er sold a record for the beat, it’s my verses they pur­chase, Without pro­duc­tion I’m worth­less but I’m more than the sur­face, Want me to sound like every song on the Top 40, I’m not for you, you not for me, you bore me, I drop lines pres­ti­gi­ous schools read to their stu­dents, Look at my album plaques, some­body agrees with the music’. Nas tells us he not known for his beats but his lyr­ics and those are not for the masses but those who really listen and under­stand him, his verses are even stud­ied by stu­dents. He must be doing some­thing right as his longev­ity and fan­base prove that. The last line on this track makes a beau­ti­ful end to the album, from what began as an aggress­ive ‘Not for the radio’ ends with, ‘Simple Things’ a more chilled vibe with lines like — ‘Everybody’s say­ing my humility’s infec­tious, I just want my kids to have the same peace I’m blessed with’, some­thing so simple yet not easy to achieve. It felt like the war of the album was over which could rep­res­ent all the drama of his private life and career and that everything Nas does is only to make a bet­ter world for his chil­dren, ‘You wealthy if your kid’s upbring­ing is bet­ter than yours’ as he stated on ‘Bon­jour’.

Anoth­er clas­sic album by Nas, I enjoyed each track for dif­fer­ent reas­ons, the more I listen to it the more it speaks to me. It left me ener­gized and motiv­ated. Themes var­ied from civil rights move­ments and hedon­ism to reli­gion, fam­ily and spir­itu­al­ity. There is def­in­itely a lot of food for thought here, it can­not be appre­ci­ated with only one listen. A warn­ing that this album may be mis­con­strued as a little inco­her­ent to those not accus­tomed to Nas’ layered style, but for those who know it’s per­fectly con­sist­ent with his leg­acy. Nas spits those thoughts in the back of your mind you don’t even want to think about let alone say out loud, I love those con­ver­sa­tions, some­times it is like he can read my sub-con­scious mind. I feel we’ve had many paradigm shifts in our soci­ety, tra­di­tion­al val­ues and expect­a­tions of human inter­ac­tions have changed, but this album feels very famil­i­ar with its sense of tra­di­tion­al­ism. We are taken on an intro­spect­ive jour­ney, leav­ing us want­ing more out of life and believ­ing we can get it too.