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NAS ALBUM REVIEW: HIP HOP IS DEAD

“It’s the end cause the game’s tired, It’s the same vibe as Good Times had right after James died, that’s why the gangsta rhymers ain’t inspired, heinous crimes help record sales more than creative rhymes, and I don’t want to keep bringing up the greater times but I’m a dreamer, Nostalgic with the state of mind..” – Nas, “Can’t Forget About You”.

Nas, Nas, Nas. What am I going to do with you huh? Sometimes I love ya and sometimes I hate ya. See one minute you’re in love, next minute you’re sending threats to haters about putting them in caskets. One minute you’re uplifting Africa and next you’re promoting misogynistic ideals. Even worse though, Jay-Z bones your baby’s mama and then you go fall in love again with Kelis and get a tattoo of her on your arm? Huh? Yuck!! Makes Benz0 want to vomit. But still at the end of the day Nas has and always will have the potential to always drop album the year cause he’s still crazy poetic. It’s simply a matter of what mood he’s in at the time and how focused he is as to how good his album will be. I mean is he thinking about licking honey off of Kelis’ toes while he’s in the studio like he was obviously doing on his last double album? Or is he thinking of ripping you to mental shreds like he was on the single “Made you Look”? I mean I feel like I’m in a relationship with Nas just cause of the long history and love hate relationship. See Nas and Benz0 go way back. In fact way back before the ballin persona of Benz0 was even born. Look Nas. When I first heard you say - “Verbal assassin, my architect pleases, when was 12 I went to Hell for snuffin Jesus, Nasty Nas is a rebel to America, police murderer, I’m causing hysteria…My troops roll up with a strange force, I was trapped in a cage and let out by the Main Source…I melt mics till the sound waves over, .Before stepping to me you’d rather step to Jehovah” - back in 1991 on Main Source’s “Live at the BBQ” off the album BREAKING ATOMS you caught my attention. Then when you dropped ILLMATIC in 1994 I declared you better than Rakhim and my favorite soloist (It helped that the Source Magazine pumped up your ILLMATIC album like it was some newly found lost scriptures written by Jesus Christ himself). But just like that my adulation of your refreshingly poignant style quickly started dissipating. Yeah your sophomore album IT WAS WRITTEN was OK but it rang true when Tupac called you out about your words on “The Message” in which you detail a story involving you getting shot and checking out the hospital the same night. Something Tupac did in real life. Even worse though is that you started getting the “big head” and doing duets with Lauryn Hill and Puffy. Then the ultimate low was dancing around with Ginuwine. By then the love was lost. But then you made a come back with STILLMATIC and I finally decide to give you a second chance and buy your double album STREET’S DISCIPLE and IT SUCKED!!!!!! Talk about feeling robbed!! So back on Benz0’s S-List you went but hold up. Now my manz is saying your new album HIP HOP IS DEAD is all that. But Benz0 is no fool. I decide to download it instead. If it’s fly I’ll cop it. So the question is. Now that I’ve downloaded it have I bought it yet? To be continued…In the next paragraph…

In this album Nas plays Pete Rock and “reminisces” on the good ol days of hiphop. You know the days of the Fat Boys, King Sun, and Black Sheep. The days when rap was still finding its identity but in which NEW and FRESH creative ideas were brought to the forefront almost on a weekly basis. OK, it’s cool to reminisce but why make your first single off your new album use the EXACT SAME TRACK as your lead song from your last album? The title track “Hip Hop Is Dead” uses his “Thief’s Theme” track from his last album. Now that’s just stupid!! But the song is his ode to always representing true lyrics in music so I accept it. He continues the reminisce theme on “Who Killed It”, “Carry On Tradition” and “Where are they Now”. But none of those songs hold a candle to his other odes to the old school in the songs “Can’t Forget About You” and “Blunt Ashes”. “Can’t Forget About You” is like a hiphop remix to “Unforgettable” and perfectly breaks down a lot of the “back in the day” moments in our lives – “Jordan’s first retirement, first time you made love, Tyson and Buster Douglas, Robert Horry’s game winning shot..etc. This song is brilliant cause it mixes in some Nat King Cole with sultry soul. Crazy brilliant man. But probably the best reminisce song is “Blunt Ashes”. This song is hard to describe. It’s got a real somber track that becomes even more somber from Nas’ morbid lyrics but ends up inspirational as he vows we can learn from the mistakes of the more high profile tragedies of famous people like when Roger Troutman got killed by his brother Larry Troutman to end Zapp, when Bill Cosby’s son got murdered, and Marvin Gaye’s death.

I really dig all the reminiscing man but of course we always want to hear that “Live at the BBQ” flow too. He delivers right on the opening track in “Money Over Bull$$$$” where he paints us yet another vivid picture of chaos. Peep these scary lyrics that are on par with the hardest lyrics out there “7 candles lit, black wallpaper, black carpet, thinking about which ni$$a to target, You kill a ni$$a today, he lives forever, so I plot it out smarter, they’ll be NO martyrs, …”. Hey Nas I’m sorry man. Whatever I’ve said in the past, Benz0 was just playing!! Nah but personally I would love for him to come out with songs like this on every song of every album he made. In my eyes he’d then be the greatest rapper to ever live. But alas that’s asking too much. However he does give us another patented Nas street story in “You Can’t Kill Me” that shows us Nas ain’t really lost a step. Of course the song that’ll get all the hype is his duet with Jigga Man Jay-Z. “Black Republican” is what they call it and it was well worth the wait. Jay absolutely rips it – “We had covenant, Who would have thought the love would end, Never imagined all the disaster that one could bring,..It’s kill or be killed how could I refrain…the pressure of success can put a good strain on friend you call best and yes it could bring out the worse in every person even the good saint..then you mix things like cars, jewelry and Ms thing…jealousy, ego and pride and this brings it all to a head like a coin,…Cha ching….the root of evil strikes again, this could sting, now the TEAM got beef between the post and the point, but this puts the RING in jeopardy.…”. Oh Hova welcome back!! I like to think it’s his apology to Nas on how the pressure of the rap game forced him to lash out at him. He mentions the “post” and the “point” which are basketball team terms and the RING means championship. So I think Jay envisioned signing Nas to Def Jam and to bring Def Jam to greater heights and knew the beef between he and Nas had to stop. See that’s the great thing about lyrics. You can make them mean what you want them to mean. Nas has a lesser duet with Snoop on “Play on Playa” that’s off the hook mostly cause of the eternal voice of Snoop Dogg. Snoop will go down in history as the most recognizable and best voice hiphop ever had. Speaking of Compton. Nas does a duet with the Game on a Dr. Dre track that is straight garbage. Yo Dre retire man. Please. You’re straight embarrassing yourself these days. And you know how I feel about the Game. Straight Lame..Hiphop is dead? Nah man West Coast is dead (except for Snoop and E-40).

Yes I would love for Nas to just assassinate fools on EVERY song but that would leave him no avenues to grow. He shows his growth and maturity with a slew of more low key songs in “Still Dreaming”, “Not Going Back”, “Hold Down the Block”. Benz0 is notorious for hating mellow songs but not if they are either inspirational, thought provoking or funky. These songs fall in all three categories. Kanye is featured on “Still Dreaming” where Nas spits some funny but true lyrics about those bum friends of yours always looking at you like you’re a bank teller – “How you a man waiting for the next man to get rich?, You’re plan is to stick out your hand real quick?, So if he feeds your family and he serves you?...s$$$, then he needs that head you getting and he deserves your b$$$$..”. On “Not Going Back” (featuring his love muffin Kelis) he lets us know how embarrassed he was on spending 60K on a stupid chain and points out that real rich people spend 60 Million on paintings. He basically lashes out on the whole stupid bling bling lifestyle of rappers cause buying a 60K chain is not really any kind of status symbol but some low grade bootleg offerings they sell to wanna be rich uneducated black folks. I love that song man cause he really speaks the truth and shows his growth and maturity that can maybe change the way stupid young blacks spend so much on stupid jewelry when they don’t even have real money to be doing that. It’s this growth and maturity that really rounds out this album and is what actually got me hooked to this album. Far as I’m concerned this is one of Nas’ best albums ever cause of the props he gives to my beloved hiphop, the street stories he gives me and the TRUTH he puts on display about US. US being black people. Black people who still suffer the “slave mentality” and US who can’t stand to see another Black man succeed. Think about it y’all. Think about how SO MANY of our so called friends become jealous and envious of our success. Think about how it’s rare that US as black people give other successful black people props. It’s always “Yeah he got this but Benz0 ain’t s$$$” or “she ain’t s$$$, she thinks she’s all that”. Nas vividly points out how most other cultures like the Jews stick together and have friends in high places. Not black folks though. We get to the top and spit on the folks on the bottom. Find ways to make others feel less about themselves. So more than anything this album not only serves as a wake up call to Black people but to hiphop artists in general. Stop the madness y’all and let’s build. So Yes I indeed paid my $13.99 and bought this album after falling in love with it. Pick it up and see if you do to!!! At least for now NAS IS BACK!!!

Benz0
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