Nas - Untitled
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he original title of Nas's ninth studio album was, as you no doubt have heard, Nigger, and the accompanying Green Lantern-produced mixtape (The Nigger Tape) still bears that title. Though Nas shucked the titular slur (apparently due to pressure from retailers, not civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton), the word nigger and its variant nigga are still the focus of the lyrics. I wrote a complete draft of this review yesterday close-reading many of the instances on Nas where the word shows up, but discarded the whole thing. As a white guy born in the South 15 years after the Civil Rights era ended (according to Wikipedia, anyway), I don't have any great insights into why or when people of any color do or can use the word. I've just heard it a lot. All I know is that I was hoping I would learn something from Nas, the way I learned from Richard Pryor's Africa routine—which serves as the outro on Nigger Tape, by the way—but I don't think I have.
Nas depicts the word as hurtful and oppressive on N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave and the Master) (They say we N.I.-double-G.E.R./We are/Much more) and samples and quotes authors as diverse as James Baldwin and Paul Mooney to give a sense of the word's history, but he's just as dismissive of his elders from the Civil Rights movement: Al Sharpton, natch, but also Martin Luther King Jr., whose rhetoric is worthless since it didn't help me get this Porsche two-seater (Y'all My Niggas). On the cover art Nas exhibits a slave's lash marks, but in the lyrics he's often tirelessly materialistic, citing on Makes the World Go Round that seeing me is like seeing through the lens of Helmut Newton's camera. Bling-baring, blasé or otherwise is inherent to hip-hop, but I think we were all expecting something a little more against the grain.
Nas's flow is still the high-water mark of hip-hop lyricism. So even if the lyrics are vacant, at least they're pretty. Nas's delivery is always captivating in its breathlessness; his timbre is glaringly rough and unpolished in contrast to his startlingly clever rhymes and imagery. On opener Queens Get the Money, which disses 50 Cent, critics and the average rap fan all in a single verse, he declares, I'm over their heads/Like a bulimic on a see-saw. On the single Hero he simultaneously boasts about his supremacy as a rhymer and laments the (racist?) restrictions of the record industry with his characteristically elaborate lyrical patterns: Nas, the only true rebel since the beginning/Still in musical prison, in jail for the flow/Try telling Bob Dylan, Bruce or Billy Joel/They can't sing what's in they soul. America is a dystopian vision like past achievements N.Y. State of Mind and One Mic. Black President builds on the famous 2Pac sample from Changes (Although it seems heaven sent, we ain't ready…) to celebrate the Obama campaign with a refreshing, or perhaps just timely, dose of skepticism: I'm thinking I can trust this brother/But will he keep it way real?
The lyrics are all terrific; the beats, not so much. Illmatic nailed hip-hop's greatest producers and¤s...
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