All the words past the margin

Jay-Z and Nas are both great rappers, and they both excel at different things. Jay-Z has always been more proflific and more consistent. His microphone presence, his choice of producers, hius lyrical confidence, and his ability to market himself are superior to his rival from queensbridge. Nas's work has been at times wildly inconsistent. Sometimes he sounds barely present while rapping. His hustler pose was always far less convincing than Jay's. Butr besides a vastly superior lyrical vocabulary, what Nas has that Jay-Z has never really had for me is a poetic virtuosity - a smooth flow with impossibly powerful symbolic content, as evinced in the first verse of "The World is Yours," (which Nas samples on "Theif's Theme," and Which Jay-Z himself sampled way back on Reasonable Doubt.)

I sip the Dom P, watchin Gandhi til I'm charged

Then writin in my book of rhymes, all the words pass the

margin

To hold the mic I'm throbbin, mechanical movement

Understandable smooth shit that murderers move

wit

The thief's theme, play me at night, they won't act

right

The fiend of hip-hop has got me stuck like a crack

pipe

The mind activation, react like I'm facin time

like

'Pappy' Mason with pens I'm embracin

Wipe the sweat off my dome, spit the phlegm on the

streets

Suede Timb's on my feets, makes my cypher,

complete

Whether crusin in a Sikh's cab, or Montero Jeep

I can't call it, the beats make me fallin asleep

I keep fallin, but never fallin six feet deep

I'm out for presidents to represent me (Say

what?)

I actually like the second verse more in some ways, but the opening four lines of the song are among the most stunning verses i've ever heard and left me speechless the first time i heard the song.