By all measures, the 2018 rollout is over NASIR, the fourth project of Kanye West’s chaotic Wyoming summer, was a mess. Marred by Nas’ lazy streams and conspiracy theories, the album also came under the oppressive cloud of accusations of domestic abuse by his ex-wife Kelis. Nas’ 13th album, King’s Disease, seeks a return to the sociable wives of 2012’s Life is good, a late-career opus who ran stash spots and triumphant nights at the Apollo ’80s while apparently questioning the dissolution of his marriage. The new album marks a return to a comfort zone of acts of nostalgia – one that suits Nas, albeit delivering declining returns.
There is despair in the way Nas endlessly plumps the scenes of his adolescence, like a red-eyed wedding guest squeezing your shoulder for three hours at the reception and pleading, “Remember?“This is the rapper who ran ‘Memory Lane’ at 20, who at 28 ex-peers could not leave the emotional boundaries of her childhood in Queensbridge. Yet Nas’ thirties had become so convinced of the interest of those years – the sanctity of jams in Cold Crush Park, the unforgettable lashes on that girl in Vernon Boulevard – and, in a strange display of humility, less concerned about his own place in it. On ‘Car # 85′, a summer ride through New York during Koch era, Charlie Wilson’s background song lends period-specific authenticity to Nas’ vivid memories of “White castles at midnight, fish sandwiches, forty ounces and fights.” In middle age he is a complete evangelist for the lost city of his youth, and for the days just before Illmatical changed everything.
By now groaning over Nas’ beat selection is the equivalent of rap-of-complaints about the weather, but Southern California’s Hit-Boy is best known for his credits on “N **** s in Paris” and “Backseat Freestyle, “frees him up pretty well as the resident producer King’s disease. Despite the synthetic brilliance of his single-track pianos, digitized strings and clapper drums, his beats are static without forgetting in the prescriptive mood music that Nas generally prefers. His audio templates are proven adaptable enough for likes of Dom Kennedy and SOB X RBE; he calls for easy clarity on the Anderson .Paak collaboration “All Bad” and the A $ AP Ferg-with “Spicy.” Nothing stands out as an anthem as a single, and it’s hard to understand what potential consumer demos have been mobilized by the performances of Big Sean and Lil Durk.
Just as relief for those who have suffered NASIR‘s arrhythmic song, the stream that Nas seemed to leave behind Life is good appears more or less restored on King’s disease. Even in his heyday, Nas would never have missed out on the most musical MC, but his ability to ride on a baseline gave his hyper-literary bars a smooth ride; op NASIR, the looseness of Kanye’s extensive productions resulted in something akin to a poetry slam. Far away are the nestled, multisyllabic rhyme schemes of the Illmatical-nei-Stillmatic bow, but Nas sounds positive energy on “Blue Benz,” rapping about Madams of Jersey City and excursions to the Tunnel with Chris Lighty. He delivers an inspiring opening song about “The Cure”, and keeps time without a snare until the beat of the second act of the song.
Nas tends to waver when tackling capital S topics (King’s disease is blessed without all Plandemic speculations), and he is better at patrolling the pathos of characters he observes or makes than he is at autobiographical soul searching, his stony influence influenced by intimacy. King’s disease unfolds with a thematic scope suitable for reminiscence and self-coronation, with a bit of the Marcus Garvey-inspired liberation theory he has in his mouth since “When I Rule the World.” In a few cases, the record manifests a vulnerability, rarely even in Nas’ most personal work, such as on “Til the War Is Won”, when he curses God for taking his brave mother instead of his jazz-playing, jet-setting father.
But where the song on the surface is a pawn for single moms, Nas culminates of broken families in a mealy-mouthed admonition: “Women, stop chasing your husband / Men, stop doing crazy, chase your wife away. ” King’s disease makes harassment of applauding women in a way that feels defensive in light of the accusations of 2018. Yet clear is the backward slut-shaming so enthusiastically tingled by J. Cole, the unconscious as-father-of- a “daughter-in-law” of the “Daughters” from 2012: on “Car # 85”, Nas recalls a hunt for a teenage crush to Co-op City only to find 10 fellow boyfriends waiting outside her building. Both “Replace Me” and “All Bad” address nameless exes, wavering between defiance and remorse without enough nuance or transparency to convey all the valuable insights.
King’s disease climax with “Full Circle”, which reunites The Firm’s 1996 lineup of Nas, AZ, Cormega and Foxy Brown. In previous corporate reunions, the reunited members – titans of the blockbuster era of New York – looked back on their wild youth, and looked confusedly about their deviant paths. “Full circle” is the closest they get to an honest account, each acknowledging mistakes along the way. AZ, always whistling mid-champagne in toast to his impossible luck, admits to dishonesty in relationships: “The games I played were stupid / Similar to the days when I packed that milly, it could have killed me.” Cormega, never one who forgets a light or a resentment, runs his problems over past control: “Think my girl was my property – I stand corrected.” (It’s strange that Foxy Brown was submitted for this exercise in male redemption, and her verse belongs entirely to another verse.) There is a commotion to the procedure, running mates driven to the suburbs and whose children attend various schools.Nas remains a prisoner of his own device, but that does not mean that his comrades can not continue.
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