New Nas Welcomes the Nas of Old
By JON CARAMANICA
Published: July 18, 2012
Nas established himself as an expert at observational detail on “Illmatic” (Columbia), his 1994 debut album, which at the time felt radical but in retrospect has proved to be a standard-bearer. It was a masterwork of anti-glamour, an album about familiar hip-hop themes that focused on consequences more than actions. Plenty of rappers talked about doing; Nas talked about watching.
Chad Batka for The New York Times
Nas performing in New Jersey last month. His album “Life Is Good” came out this week.
Ennio Leanza/European Pressphoto Agency
Nas in concert this month in Switzerland.
Nas's album cover features a green dress, like Kelis wore at their wedding.
That’s the approach that Nas has returned to again and again over the past two decades, sometimes after long detours into lighter and less effective territory. No matter how grand the boasts in his songs, no matter how infectious the music, the moments on Nas albums that stand out are the smallest ones, in which he articulates experiences that would be overlooked by almost anyone else.
“Loco-Motive” appears early on his 10th solo album, “Life Is Good” (Def Jam), released this week and his first album in four years. It’s stark and hard, a boom-bap production that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on “Illmatic.” The song features ad-libbed taunts by Large Professor, of the revered 1990s group Main Source.
Nas unfolds the third verse slowly, forgoing direct rhyme for vivid picture: “At night, New York, eat a slice, too hot/Use my tongue to tear the skin hanging from the roof of my mouth.” He’s a calm, steady rapper, with a slightly scratched voice that communicates a bit of wonder. Even now, at 38, he sounds as if he’s perceiving new things.
That song sets the tone for an album that’s a simulacrum of the sound that made him legendary, capturing Nas in his vintage prime without coming off as anachronistic. Nostalgia is a tool here, a paintbrush and not a crutch. “Life Is Good” would probably have been among the best hip-hop albums of 1993 and, as it happens, is likely to be one of the best hip-hop albums of 2012.
It’s produced largely by No I.D., who first made his mark on pensive, slightly raw 1990s albums by Common (when he was still Common Sense) and Salaam Remi, who helped shape the sound of the Fugees and, more recently, the classic hip-hop-influenced retro-soul of Amy Winehouse.
Looking backward isn’t always a great strategy; it can scan as retrograde, or worse, as proof that an artist has fallen from onetime highs. But Nas is someone who is animated by the past, specifically his past.
This album is suffused with his history, expressed in precise and often tragic detail. On “A Queens Story” he recounts his early tug of war between the streets and music, and he affectionately eulogizes old friends who didn’t make it.
Elsewhere there are memories of noted Queens rappers (MC Shan) and drug kingpins (Supreme Team) and stories about more innocent times in hip-hop: “Remember talking to Biggie inside his Lex truck/Said ‘Stay fly when you bummy/Keep your pajamas Armani.’ ”
Even after all these years Nas remains one of the few lyricists who unpacks typically boastful narratives of violence. (Kendrick Lamar is proving to be a worthy modern heir, but he’s a rarity.) That happens on “A Queens Story,” on which Nas chides an amateur thug: “You ain’t mean to murk him, you gun’s a virgin/Better stay on point, if not, it’s curtains.” Cleverly that lyric then becomes the hook for the following song, “Accident Murderers,” which manages to be both empathetic and disgusted.
Sometimes the memories are embedded in the music itself. “Reach Out,” which features his fellow ’90s survivor Mary J. Blige, samples the jaunty piano from Isaac Hayes’s “Ike’s Mood,” which was used to devastating effect on Intelligent Hoodlum’s 1993 single “Grand Groove” and by Ms. Blige herself on “I Love You” (1995).
Nas is also mindful enough of history and committed enough to respecting it that he collaborates with artists who’ve died, an act of personal memoir more than homage: “Cherry Wine” features Winehouse, who was an avowed Nas fan, and “The Don” is partly credited to Heavy D, who died last year: “Although he’s on to another chapter/Heavy D gave this beat to Salaam for me to rap to.”
There’s one glaring misstep here, the springy “Summer on Smash,” which is part of a long tradition of clunky radio-friendly crossover Nas tracks that place the perceived demands of the marketplace in front of what he’s naturally best at. Truth is, when Nas is at his blithest, he’s no fun. “Send a massive e-mail to the females,” he raps on this song, awkwardly.
Furthermore Nas’s penchant for narrative occasionally gets in his way; his stories sometimes distractingly fanciful, his ideologies a little too loose cannon. And from time to time he gets tripped up over his words, loving them so much that he overstuffs them into his lyrics.
But as flaws go, that one’s in keeping with Nas’s sense of discovery, which is still intact. What’s most exciting about this album is hearing him apply his old techniques to new subject matter. On “Daughters” he tackles fatherhood, vacillating between forgiving his daughter her occasional transgressions and indicting himself for not being a stern enough parent. (Here too his need for words briefly gets the best of him: “This morning I got a call, nearly split my wig/The social network called, said ‘Nas, go and get your kid.’ ”)
And then there’s his marriage to the singer Kelis, which ended in divorce in 2010. On thealbum cover Nas poses with part of the green dress worn by Kelis at their 2005 wedding. The album closes with “Bye Baby,” a frank dissection of their relationship, buffeted with a hook sampled from “Goodbye Love” by the New Jack Swing innovators Guy, Aaron Hall’s aching voice setting a painful mood.
But even here Nas is surprisingly loving. And what’s invigorating him are, of course, the details:
You screaming at the racist cops in Miami was probably
The highlight of my life
Like, ha, yo, look at my wife, gangsta
Me and 20 cops ’bout to fight, crazy night
Bailed you out, next morning we got clean,
Like it never happened, then later we at that Heat game
Just another day in the life, of two people in love
But it wasn’t enough
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