Nas - Untitled
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Pitchfork Media Rating: 0
I'd hate to confuse correlation with causation, but the 18 months since Hip Hop Is Dead have gone a long way towards proving Nas wrong. Graduation and Tha Carter III showed that challenging mainstream artists can still produce genuine Billboard blockbusters, the avant-garde has been well-represented by stellar releases by Dalek, Subtle, and El-P (amongst others), and the likes of Jay Electronica (producer of the astounding intro Queens Get the Money) and Wale have emerged as exciting new voices with promising commercial prospects. Even Nas seems to have gotten the message this year, producing an excellent 21st-century record that balances political powderkegs, audacious Escobar floss raps, complementary beats, and genuine inspiration. Unfortunately, that record was the far superior DJ Green Lantern Presents: The Nigger Tape (whose songs are sadly underrepresented here), not Untitled. Not that it's going to matter. Whether Nas intended to actually follow through with his incendiary, original album title, he's been treating his own self-fulfilling martyrdom as the record's main goal. (See the claim on Hero: Try telling Bob Dylan, Bruce, and Billy Joel they can't sing what's in they soul/ So Untitled it is/ I never changed nothing.) Whatever the unfettered vision for the record, through masterful PR work, Nas has given ample reason for listeners to blame everyone but himself for his most cynical and arguably worst album yet. At least Nastradamus was up front about being a shitty crossover bid. The most frustrating thing is that this could have been a soild record. But now, how is Nas going to come off like he intended Untitled to be an unflinching look at race relations and yet somehow leave off the track he did with stic.man? Worse still, the righteous message of Association (strength through interaction with those who inspire you) is forsaken for the stilted, spoken-word ramblings of Testify, in which Nas accuses white downloaders of being unwilling to ride with him for whatever reason. And what about the hallucinogenic Esco Let's Go, where he fantasized about [writing] hood movies like Posse and Five Heartbeats while summoning Elizabeth Taylor for career advice? Instead, we get an elderly German rhyming knotty head with Nazi sled (America), Breathe and its boring consumption rhymes (First I cop/ Then I yacht-- do go on!), and the gutless Make the World Go Round in which Nas, Chris Brown, and Cool & Dre top even Fat Joe in terms of trend-hopping insincerity, toasting to ballers, gangstas, hustlas, and the very same ringtone rappers he was willing to throw under the bus just two years ago when it was convenient for his public image. On Untitled you get to decide whether you prefer Nas thoroughly exploring half-assed concepts or half-assedly exploring thorough concepts. Note the distinction: Either he's missing obvious targets or hitting ones not worth aiming at. Peep Sly Fox, a concerted attempt to be the She Watch Channel Zero?! for conservative news zombies, right down to its steady guitar chug. The main difference is that Channel Zero risked alienation by confronting its target head on, whereas when it comes to preaching to the choir and picking easy fights, Nas has no problem being the Morgan Spurlock of this rap shit. Speaking of rhymin' for the sake of riddlin'-- The Fox has a Bushy tail/ And Bush tells lies and Fox trots, so I don't know what's real. Which essentially means nothing. More successful is the Busta Rhymes-featuring Fried Chicken, which might actually be the record's strongest cut, but it doesn't take the expected route of cultural subtext, instead working the blues trope of female/food personification. But immediately after, you get the per-album perspective piece Project Roach, and in case Nas' verses somehow went over your head, a Last Poet intones, Niggas is like roaches/ We're never gonna go away. Just because you understand him, it don't mean that he's nice, and just to make sure you're even more confused once the record finally ends, he precedes the suspiciously fence-sitting Obama song (Black President) with We're Not Alone, a cashed-bowl musing on extraterrestrial life. As anyone who has followed Nas in the past decade knows, you're not here for the beats. Though he's never been hesitant to enlist the trendiest producers, they're rarely inspired to step up their game; here, it's obvious what the difference is between second-rate Timbaland tracks and something from the new line of pop-savvy super-producers. Particularly in the first half, Untitled is turned into Vice City, where each hired gun coats their tracks with ugly layers of polyester drums, fluorescent synths, and aimless violence. You can distinctly hear Polow Da Don buying into his own hype on Hero, ignoring Nas as a lead instrument and bombing out the mix with pinwheeling keyboard arpeggios and obtrusive unison bends. On previous listens, N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave and the Master) sounded like the record's centerpiece and DJ Toomp's honest approximation of the fat cat lounginess of American Gangster. But check its tinny string section and...
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