I never subscribed to the "Nas is critiqued unfairly" logic...I thought that was just a cop out by his stans to try and defend some of his weaker albums...but that shyt is definitely true.
Nas can make a musical masterpiece, like KD2, and all some of these 45+ rusty hip hop heads will care about is that it doesn't sound like the rhymes were written in a project hallway and Hitboy's beats are too "good" basically, lol, too musical and layered. I respect Nas for not giving a fukk about placating them couple of people and just continuing to focus on the music quality only...it doesn't matter if you can't imagine Rakim or Buckshot rhyming on this production, lol, Nas is a much bigger, more worldly artist than them.
I think the 3 or 4 old head bad reviews I've seen in here are all based on how Nas flowed on "40 Side" and that beat...lowkey that's all it is that turned them off, imo, cause I don't see how anyone can deny how great this music is, that's the only real understandable complaint...because it turned me off the 1st time. After that tho, that was one of my fav records. "Rare" turned me off the very first time too, the way he was rapping...it wasn't until the beat switched that I got into it, initially. Now that's one of my favs too, lol.