Nas: "Nasty"

To write anything about Nas in the last ten or so years, one can’t say the comeback singles or commercial grabs or street nods are unusually strong or disappointing—whatever the angle or provocation, they merely perpetuate the Nas brand, if that can be what it’s called, without showing a clear path to a second classic. And so in true form, “Nasty” is basically a tighter “Made You Look” with an effectively late-Beasties style Salaam Remi beat and lyrics that are engaging without ever really being very interesting.

“I’m not in the winters of my life or the beginner stage,” he says, which sounds hollow compared to “the essence of adolescent leaves my body” in “Life’s A Bitch.” Still, both sentiments combine age with naivete in a way that sums up Nas’s continuing charm, even if that charm becomes more conceptual than visceral the older he gets, the further he gets from the essence of his adolescence.

“Nasty” is a gauntlet dropper in the “D.O.A.” mold—hookless and grumpy—but that it approaches rap qua rap via Illmatic (1994) instead of through the blatant Hip Hop Is Dead (2006) makes it the closest to a success we could expect. Here there’s not any casual density, or stories, or pop like in his other eras, either, just a “late night, candlelight, fiend wit’ diesel in his needle,” putting up resistance to entropy and pretenders, creakily energetic. Here is the same dialectic that makes the idea of Nas always interesting to think about even when he’s been eclipsed in execution by more agile rappers with multiple mixtapes out a year. Here is the reason we still listen to any classic artist: to be titillated by both memory and hope.