With the release of the long-awaited collaborative album by Nas and DJ Premier, there seem to be two lines of thought. The first?<\/p>\n
Frank White: You havin\u2019 a good time huh, Jim?
Jimmy Jump: Hey man, I been waitin\u2019 YEARS for this!
-Nicholas St. John, King of New York (1990)<\/p>\n
For the second?
\u201cIt ain\u2019t ninety-fo\u2019, Joe, we can\u2019t go back.\u201d
-Common, Chi City (2005)<\/p>\n
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As the final release of the Mass Appeal \u201cLegend Has It\u2026\u201d marketing campaign, the anticipation for this album has been building up for more than twenty years. Last year\u2019s \u201cDefine My Name\u201d notwithstanding, the last time Premo produced a beat for a Nas record was on the latter\u2019s \u201cStillmatic\u201d album from late 2001. Well, the wait is now over. This past Friday, the duo finally released \u201cLight-Years\u201d. The album title is fitting as both artists are now light years away from where they began in 1994. The release has certainly been polarizing among fans (see above). However, I will say that for anyone who was expecting another \u201cRepresent\u201d or \u201cDWYCK\u201d? Sorry, this album ain\u2019t that.<\/p>\n
They begin with \u201cMy Life Is Real\u201d. Over chopped piano keys, Nas big-ups several of hip-hop\u2019s fallen soldiers and even lampshades his own involvement in the Mass Appeal album releases when he raps \u201cAlready classic before you heard it, the spoiler was all my feature verses \/ I lined it up kinda perfect and then I hurled it.\u201d Premo goes skeletal on \u201cGiT Ready\u201d, providing a mostly simple drum & bass production. Lyrically, Nas uses double-entendres to flex his business acumen, rapping about his success in being an early investor in big businesses, dubbing himself the \u201cCryptocurrency Scarface\u201d. With \u201cNY State of Mind Pt. 3\u201d, the production was disappointing. It begins with a sped-up vocal sample of Billy Joel\u2019s \u201cNew York State of Mind\u201d, but then shifts into darker, moodier loop with dusty boom-bap snares, and has a few sonic allusions to the original \u201cNY State of Mind\u201d on \u201cIllmatic\u201d. Nas, to his credit, makes reference to many current and old New York City landmarks. \u201cWelcome to the Underground\u201d has a menacing blues sound to it, and Nas raps about when hip-hop hit Queensbridge and how most rappers all got their start in the underground. Nas also mourns different periods of hip-hop as he raps \u201cEpitomize, personify an open letter to multiple golden eras that ended.\u201d On the gloomy \u201cMadman\u201d, Premo comes through with his classic familiar sound: Bouncy snares, record scratching, and vintage loops. Over this canvas, Nas takes aim at the current generation of rappers when he spits \u201cYou know that Metro Boomin and Future, we still don\u2019t trust you \/ Didn\u2019t start it but I boosted it, figured I\u2019d bring it back since.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starting in the middle of the album, several tracks are love-letters to hip-hop. \u201cPause Tapes\u201d begins with a vocal recording of Mobb Deep\u2019s Havoc describing how he started to make beats. The track is built from a chopped keyboard sample, and Nas raps how he himself started making pause tapes while Premo incorporates sounds of actual pause tapes. \u201cWriters\u201d is a salute to bombers and graf writers, referencing several (Lee Qui\u00f1ones, Saint, Blade, Ink, Crash, et. al.) while comparing the mics he wields as a rapper with the art tools that Graffiti writers use. Premo\u2019s beat is very nocturnal, which works well as city bombing is done at night. At the track\u2019s end, Nas encourages all current graf writers to keep at it. \u201cSons (Young Kings)\u201d is soft in terms of production. The snares are snapping fingers and the backdrop is R&B-sounding, but Nas takes it and uses it for reflecting on sons (including his own) and what they go through. Think of it as a sequel Nas\u2019 2012 song \u201cDaughters\u201d. The Steve Miller Band is said to be featured on \u201cIt\u2019s Time\u201d, but Premo just reworked a sample from the band\u2019s song \u201cFly Like An Eagle\u201d. Another song that\u2019s an example of classic Nas\/Premo is \u201cNasty Esco Nasir\u201d. Lyrically creative, Nas raps as himself, using three different versions of himself: Nasty Nas (from\u201994 and before), Nas Escobar (the start of his commercial success), and finally his present self, Nasir. Over an ominous sample, Nasir destroys his outdated variants:<\/p>\n
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As a callback to \u201cIllmatic\u201d, Nas brings Brooklyn\u2019s own AZ on \u201cMy Story Your Story\u201d. The chemistry between Nas and AZ is undeniable. Nas seems to revert to his older persona as he and AZ have a conversational rap in both verses. As a testament to Nas being a hip-hop elder statesman and his knowledge of the culture\u2019s history, \u201cBouquet (To the Ladies)\u201d is an ode to the women who are part of hip-hop (Roxanne Shant\u00e9, Queen Latifah, Eternia, Jean Grae, Lauryn Hill, Ch\u00e9 Noir, Salt-N-Pepa, Faith Newman, and others). The sample Premo used for this production was instantly recognizable for me as I heard it over twenty years ago on a De La Soul album. However, Premo added his own touch on it for how he flipped it. The theme on \u201cJunkie\u201d is comparing hip-hop to drug addiction as Nas and Premo have an all-encompassing need for it by their own admissions. Rakim and CunninLynguists have previously used this concept in \u201cMicrophone Fiend\u201d and \u201cMy Habit (I Haven\u2019t Changed)\u201d, respectively. \u201cShine Together\u201d ironically incorporates a line by P. Diddy from 1997\u2019s \u201cVictory\u201d: \u201cAnd we might as well shine together.\u201d Lastly, \u201c3rd Childhood\u201d closes out the album, and is a sequel to 2001\u2019s \u201c2nd Childhood\u201d, but Nas takes aim at himself this time. \u201cLight-Years\u201d is a good album, but not the best in Mass Appeal\u2019s 2025 roll-out. Nas is an elite lyricist, no question. And Premo? He\u2019s an elite producer. But for \u201cLight-Years\u201d, he laced several tracks that were simply \u201cjust OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the release of the long-awaited collaborative album by Nas and DJ Premier, there seem to be two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-187368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}