Street's Disciple

I've made it through pretty much the entire first disc of Nas's new double album, and to my surprise, it's pretty good. I heard God's Son recouped some lost ground after the string of late-nineties dissapointments - (also heard stillmatic wasn't too bad either,) but i haven't bought a Nas record since Illmatic. (Which is hands down one of the best hip hop records of the last two decades.) The first disc of his sixth full legnth/first double cd-if-you-don't-count-the-illmatic-reissue. Nas does his whole prophet schtick, but his "self conscious racial pedagogy," to borrow a phrase Paul Gilroy used to describe KRS-ONE in Black Atlantic*, isn't nearly as problematically gendered here as on, say, "I Know I Can," and in foregrounding the politics, Nas still finds a space to make ironic critiques of the posture/positionality of the "conscious rapper," ending a song in which he declares UPN and WB black sitcom stars to be little more than postmeodern minstrels with a male voice asking him what he's done for the people lately as he runs to his limousine. The beats are also more succesful and less distracting than the aforementioned Beethoven sample. (And yes, i know what Nas was trying to do with the "Fur Elise" sample, but i found the song more annoying than revelatory.

"they say prescott bush funded hitler, now the world's in a twister - n----, what you expect?" - "Reason"

"You Know My Style" closes off the first disc, and doesn't really work for me, but "U.B.R. (Unauthorized Biography of Rakim)" is pretty amazing. And if Nas praises the figures of the late eighties golden age on UBR, on "Virgo," he gives one a verse - none other than Doug E. Fresh. Even post-bill o' reilly-ludacris is relatively on-point. Nas's premarital attempt to grapple with sexuality is graphic, but decidedly pro-jimmy hat, and ultimately sort of cute. ("remember the times i hung with the dimes/remember the times i fucked a few/rememberin the times/it was on my mind/but none of them could touch you.") And then it gets homophobic. Fuck. "Makings of the perfect bitch" explores the masculine imaginary and shouts out terry mcmillan. On "getting married," Nas proclaims "this ain't no huxtable kisses and love shit," and discusses bliss with Kelis, who, it turns out is "The perfect bitch.""Say hello to the man, goodbye to the giggolo... even martin luther king had a fling on the side." hmmm...

"Bridging The Gap," with it's father-son collaboration blues rap, is probably making african-american studies grad students around the country bounce with glee. It's pretty awesome. ("Muddy waters, howlin' wolf, you don't stop.")

i like theif's theme more now, than i did when i first heard it. Once you get over the fact that he's sampling en-a-gadda-da-vida and himself, it's a pretty good song.

Sure, it's a little pretentious, and like every nas album since '94, it ain't illmatic, but that's ok.

*(As i've written elsewhere, i think Gilroy's dismissal of KRS is premature and ignores some of the transnational nature of the ways in which Kris Parker, at least in his earlier work, envision collectivity and diaspora, and particularly his relationship to reggae and dancehall techniques.)