Hiphop's N — The New Nas

When Nas talks, people listen. As one of the only commercially successful political mofos left in hiphop, Nas is expected to put it down with intelligent street commentary on a regular basis. The “untitled” ninth album of his 14-year career is a self-described “verbal book” full of invective against the U.S. and Nasir’s analysis of the socioeconomic state of black America (CNN this ain’t)—with a few blingy detour mentions of Lamborghinis, Chrome Hearts and Vivienne Westwood—that’s easily the most thought-provoking hiphop CD this year.

We all know Nas originally conceived this concept album as Nigger, exploring how the world often sees black folks through a racist lens, on songs like “N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave and the Master)” and “Y’all My Niggas,” but Def Jam forced a title change, afraid of ruining the album’s prospects at, like, Wal-Mart. (Whatever happened to the Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. days?) Nas criticizes the industry for its double standards on “Hero”: “Try telling Bob Dylan, Bruce or Billy Joel they can’t sing what’s in their soul.” Despite the controversy, Nas still combines heady literary references (James Baldwin, William Cooper, Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Van Sertima) and conspiracy theory polemics (claiming presidents Coolidge and Jefferson were part Native American) into a heady mélange.

Working with a slew of lesser-known producers like Stargate, DJ Toomp and Eric Hudson (to reduce production costs?) gives the music a certain radio-friendly sameness, but Nas almost always makes up the difference with his tight lyricism. On “America,” he invokes John Lennon’s “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” exalting women, proposes the country revise its law books and indicts the U.S. for enslaved Africans’ “involuntary labor” and the “killed indigenous people.” Though he rides the fence between endorsing and being skeptical of Obama (“Black President”), his alliances with the likes of David Banner (“Middle Finger,” which was dropped at the last minute but shouldn’ta been) and the Last Poets (“Project Roach”) ensure that Nas’s black nationalism is never in doubt.

Random shit (and can we all bury “isht” this year?): “Queens Gets the Money” is my favorite. Produced by Jay Electronica, Nas is barely on the beat sometimes (and there’s no real beat, it’s mostly naked piano) and he’s got a laidback, off-the-dome jazz flow. “Sly Fox” is the Fox News dig (“unplug from the matrix doctrine”) resulting from O’Reilly trying to dis Nas a while back. The interludes are cool, they’re not really skits, they’re choice bits of knowledge talkin about “post-traumatic slave syndrome” and how we need a movement to resurrect the spirit of black community, not a funeral for the word “nigger” (that’s you, NAACP). A Tribe Called Quest summed up the heart of all this on “Sucka Nigga” 15 years ago; Mos Def touched on it again in 1999 with Q-Tip’s help on “Mr. Nigga,” but nigger doesn’t die, it multiplies.

Peace to Richard Pryor (That Nigger’s Crazy, Bicentennial Nigger), and the curious case of this Lennon performance on The Dick Cavett Show below: