Nas - King's Disease II (Discussion Thread)

[spliz]

The word consistent can be misleading though. Because something can be consistently terrible.

But you're right. KD was consistent in the sense that all of the beats ranged from decent to good. But nothing truly special. And they played that range from beginning to end. I'd rather have an album that's more inconsistent but has all time level classics like gods son. It was up and down. But it had heaven. Book of rhymes. Mastermind. Made you look.

While Kings disease was prolly a more "consistent" album overall, it still had nothing remotely close to these tracks. It was a solid 20 pt game where Nas was able to show he could adapt his sound to the new age. But Nas and hitboy are more capable of that. I'm not expecting stillmatic level shyt. But there's no reason Nas still can't drop an album on the level of pimp a butterfly. I actually wish Nas would connect with TDE's in house producers.

Hit boy basically gave him a bunch of beats he prolly produced for other artists. Nas even said he let hitboy dictate the direction of the album. So I'm hoping on this one hitboy actually catered everything specifically to Nas.

I hope Untitled >>>> TPAB. I didn’t even like that TPAB like that.

 

[Mike the Executioner]

Lol Mainstream albums do not leak

Revival leaked. Four years later, I still don't see why someone would want people to hear that album ahead of time.

 

[ApolloStark]

On Spotify @ 12am?

 

[the cool]

I hope Untitled >>>> TPAB. I didn’t even like that TPAB like that.

My least favorite Kendrick album

 

[Life is Good]

Nah you Nas groupies do. And that's coming from somebody who has Nas top 3 ever. But y'all can never take any type of criticism about his work. Need to calm your sensitive asses down

What you said was not criticism. It was actually a negative opinion or better yet speculation with zero foundation.

Your statement:
“Hit boy basically gave him a bunch of beats he prolly produced for other artists. Nas even said he let hitboy dictate the direction of the album. So I'm hoping on this one hitboy actually catered everything specifically to Nas.”

But you have the nerve to call someone a “groupie” and tell them to “calm their sensitive asses.”

 

[Slim Charles]

I’ve said it before. I love KD. It’s a very solid 4/5 album and I’ve played that joint hundreds of times but it felt like a ‘safe album’. Does it have 5/5 joints? For sure like The Cure and Car #85 but I don’t think Nas and Hitboy took it to the levels they could. That’s not a diss I just think both could take it to another level and I honestly believe KD2 going to do that.

 

[Life is Good]

It’s very telling in some of these comments that y’all just like to type bullshyt.

 

[Big Dick]

Less than 8 hours brehs.

 

[Alexander Wiggin]

It’s been nearly 30 years since Illmatic dropped out of the projects of Queensbridge and set the standard for all to follow. Most of today’s hip-hop chart toppers – Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Baby, Polo G – were not even alive when a 20-year-old Nasir Jones, the son of the great jazz cornetist Olu Dara, made rap fans succumb to his nihilistic poetry, multisyllabic rhymes and street philosophy.

This Friday sees the release of King’s Disease 2, his 13th solo studio album, which comes in the same year that he won his first Grammy Award – surely a nod to the great rapper’s whole body of work as much as that individual album.



It’s not been an easy road to “Godfather” status for the 47-year-old. There was the trauma of his mum dying of cancer in his arms and the ordeal of a threatened boycott of his ninth album after it was originally titled with a racial epithet.

He has seen comrades, colleagues and collaborators not reach middle age. The list of ill-fated Nineties rap luminaries is long: Tupac, Biggie, DMX, Prodigy, Guru, ODB, Phife Dawg.


The Queens native has not been immune to controversy either, from his vicious feud with Jay-Z to lyrics expressing anti-vaccination views to going to war with Fox News and their myriad white supremacist hosts.


Nas was also married to R&B star, Kelis, for four years from 2005. Their relationship was a volatile one, with the singeraccusinghim of being mentally and physically abusive during their time together. Nas denied the allegations and claimed that she subjected him to “very hostile behaviour and verbal abuse” as well as “physical violent attacks”. He rapped extensively about their fraught and toxic marriage on 2012’sLife is Good, often applying brutal, vicious imagery to describe his ex-wife.


That he has come out of the allegations unscathed is a symptom of a wider problem within the music industry and hip hop. These attitudes lead to Russell Simmons appearing on the Verzuz battle between Method Man and Redman; to LA Reid still being one of the most powerful men in the music industry, working with artists such as Jennifer Lopez and Big Boi; and it’s also what allows DaBaby to perform with Tory Lanez despite the latter being charged with shooting Megan Thee Stallion just last year (Lanez has denied the allegation).

But here he is, still fiery, still insightful, marked by a lifetime of living of unbearable poverty turned extreme wealth, the trappings of police violence and the inescapable belief that his life should have turned out very differently.


He told the Financial Times before his recent Grammy win: “All I could see in my dreams was guns. I kept having nightmares about cops, and this was a time where I was removed from the hood but I survived. I made it out.”

The same interview saw him incapable of celebrating rap’s Nineties glory days of which he was an integral part: “It felt like the danger from the block was still right around the corner. We were young men who had to grow up so fast and there was a lot of responsibility on our shoulders.”


As listeners of Illmatic and the rest of his discography know, Nas was always an old head with a baby face, more philosopher than hustler – but he is also a linguistic genius, capable of bending words, rhymes and syllables at will.

Even the verbally dexterous Eminem is in awe at Nas’s technical abilities, particularly on “Halftime”, as he toldZane Lowe: “One of the reasons that I picked ‘Halftime’ [as one of my favourite tracks] is because there’s some rhyme schemes on there that most rappers to this day probably can’t do and that’s one of the things that has made Nas so great over his career.”


He added: “When he said ‘Because when I blast the herb, that’s my word, I’ll be slaying them fast, doing this, that, and the third. But chill, pass the Andre, and let’s slay. I bag b****** up at John Jay and hit a matinee’... he was rhyming entire sentences. And I’m like, ‘What the f*** is this?’”

Slim Shady, who officially collaborates with Nas for the first time on King’s Disease 2, also spoke of the influence of Illmatic on a whole: “Everybody knows that is a classic, essential album, I don’t know where you place that in hip hop, but it’s got to be at the top.”

The winds of change come quickly to the music industry, especially in hip hop, where the genre is young and ever evolving, and gimmicky fads are a dime a dozen, what allows Nas to endure is that he can be everything but still be Nas. He exists outside the time of trends. He flirted with the maximalist bling of Puff Daddy (or whatever he calls himself these days) in the late Nineties and is equally adept at playing the gangster and the activist.

Nas himself is blind to the labels placed on him and his music: “I’ve been called everything. Gangsta rap. I’ve been called conscious rap. You know, everything. Whoever feels like calling it whatever they want to call it, that’s on them.”


He also sleeps soundly without thought for the young guns coming up, and is ambivalent to much of contemporary mainstream rap – not unlike a lot of the crowd that came of age in the Nineties. While King’s Disease featured youngsters Fivio Foreign and Lil Durk, he admitted: “I appreciate what’s out there, but there’s no one keeping me up at night. I hear a new rap record and think it’s great, but I don’t listen to it the next week.”

The one new artist he has singled out for praise was the late Pop Smoke, a 21st-century hybrid of DMX and 50 Cent: “We were happy to see that young king come up. He was a breath of fresh air. The drill movement in London, Chicago, and New York is really exciting.”

While much of contemporary hip hop bears little resemblance to the complex, detailed rhymes of Nas, it’s impossible to imagine the music landscape without him. Kendrick Lamar, the first non-classical or jazz artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, is effervescent in his celebration of Nas and how Illmaticforged his storytelling abilities: “I wouldn’t have been able to do that if it wasn’t for that album, truthfully.”


J Cole, too, has said he “idolises” the elder statesman of rap, even making the track “Let Nas Down” after the New Yorker said he hated Cole’s single “Work Out”.


It’s been a long time since Nas was that kid growing up in a tiny apartment hooked on jazz and soul records, the fires of street life raging against the walls. He couldn’t have known the world was his – but it was.

why EVERY review of a Nas album gotta start with a reminder of illmatic, like shyt was 30 years ago , he dropped a lot of albums in between

 

[((ReFleXioN)) EteRNaL]

I’ve said it before. I love KD. It’s a very solid 4/5 album and I’ve played that joint hundreds of times but it felt like a ‘safe album’. Does it have 5/5 joints? For sure like The Cure and Car #85 but I don’t think Nas and Hitboy took it to the levels they could. That’s not a diss I just think both could take it to another level and I honestly believe KD2 going to do that.

Exactly what I been saying but the Nas groupies can't take it.......I prolly consider Nas the GOAT. But Kings disease was a very safe and routine album. Kinda reminded me of a new common album. Didn't really dig deep. Just stayed on the surface. It's still a solid album to play when you're crusing or cooking or some shyt. But it doesn't have much replay value or substance behind it.

The Cure was the clear standout. That track was Nas ending the shyt letting his fans know he can still go to that level when he wants. Obviously the first album he wanted to make something more accessible to all audiences and he succeeded. But I wanna see them go deeper on this one. And Hitboy saying it sounds like "modernized boom bap" gives me hope that they're gonna do that.

 

[Alexander Wiggin]

Exactly what I been saying but the Nas groupies can't take it.......I prolly consider Nas the GOAT. But Kings disease was a very safe and routine album. Kinda reminded me of a new common album. Didn't really dig deep. Just stayed on the surface. It's still a solid album to play when you're crusing or cooking or some shyt. But it doesn't have much replay value or substance behind it.

The Cure was the clear standout. That track was Nas ending the shyt letting his fans know he can still go to that level when he wants. Obviously the first album he wanted to make something more accessible to all audiences and he succeeded. But I wanna see them go deeper on this one. And Hitboy saying it sounds like "modernized boom bap" gives me hope that they're gonna do that.

the problem with that is as soon as nas wants to take risk with the production, it's "he can't pick beats". Jarreau of Rap was very experimental and people shat on it. Lost tapes 2 untitled and street's disciple were clear examples of nas gettin untraditional production and yet people got mixed reations.

Nas is the type of artist that can't satisfy his entire fan base no matter what he do. It's either too safe or too left field, too much ups and downs or too much consistensy but not enoughs highs. He's one of the rare artist when one or 2 bad songs can ruin an album of 13 15 good songs. Like I've seen people saying iww and stillmatic ain't classic because of nas is coming and braveheart party, like really ? There's songs that I skipped on classics album, I'm not throwing away an album for 1 or 2 tracks, what kinda shyt is this ? only with Nas

Others like drake fans, jay fans or eminem fans are mad annoying, but at least they are not over analyzing their artist and simply get on board no matter what the artist give

 

[Ziggiy]

I don't think he was talking about criticism, but rather the idea that Hit-Boy gave Nas leftover beats that he produced for other artists. That does sound kind of far-fetched to me, regardless of whether you like the production.

There’s footage of Hit Boy, Nas, and Charlie Wilson creating the beat for Car #85 in the studio. The suggestion that Hit Boy gave Nas “left over” beats is absolutely ludicrous

 

[SwizzLake]

California gets KD2 9pm local time...must be nice.

 

[Ziggiy]

Talk that shyt HIT

 

[kes929]

It’s very telling in some of these comments that y’all just like to type bullshyt.

We ain't worried about them Haha. We ready for that KD2.