Slim Charles
All Star
OK been a week now. Had to get some shyt of my chest coz this was one of my weirdest listening experience of all Nas' catalogue.
Last week I told my wife and kids to forget about me from thursday night to Friday morning, don't even talk to me and shyt, I was really expecting something exceptional/historical and I set my alarm at 5.45 and 6AM Friday morning to listen to the A2HH stream live with everybody. Previous night I couldn't sleep coz of anticipation and fell asleep around 3.30 something. And of course 3hrs later when the alarm rang, I fukking didn't wake up. All I know is I jumped out my bed at 6.40, already mad as hell I had missed it, log onto stationhead and they were playing Abracadra... I guess it was the second spin. I was throw off man, I felt Nas was sounding totally out of place, forcing himself on such a beat, and with simplistic sucking his own dikk rhymes, like not the Nas brags different type he does usually.
I'm not even sure they played the whole album in order but anyway... Office Hours... Nas spitting insane, but the shock of 50s voice and short verse kinda killed it for me. When Black Magic kicked in, it felt weird again. Like on Abra, the 808s hit fukking hard but the rhyming on the first verse felt very basic to me. At that point I'm having PTSD of Summer on smash and I can't think of anything else, even if the 2nd verse is much better. But I already know I'm listening to something that's way inferior to Magic.. Imagine it even makes me not like Motion on first listen coz of the hook is bugging me..
To shorten it up, the only song I really love on first listen is Slow it down. I think I played it a 2nd time in the bed, and fall back to sleep tight as hell. Wifey wakes me up later on and asks me about the album and I tell her it's a fukking letdown.
If it were another artist I might have not even gave it another listen. Butttttt, the next day we on the road for a long drive and I play it again and that's when I get a brand new listening experience. The tracks I felt were mid/bad on first listening were the ones I was rewinding the most. And when my wife said "for someone who said the album sucked u been looping it all day"
I finally accepted it couldn't be a second Magic. I had already somehow anticipated that the level couldn't be going up eternally, at some point they were gonna make an album that's not as brilliant as the previous. And I see why they took this angle, probably for that reason actually.
It's a good pause during the series, a different album from the rest, all of them are different but this one's really apart. Not mad at it, and certainly not mad if Nas keeps on working with Hit. I wouldn't say no to a couple other producers sending shyt, but I can't imagine anybody else in the market handling a full Nas album, pushing him to this level of rapping he's had for 3 years. And Hit-Boy will have my eternal respect for that.
All in all, I think I now place it slightly above KD1. Can't touch the other 3 though, IMO.
Crazy my reaction to each song almost identical on first listen and how sequencing / expectations/ type of songs had me disappointed.
Which meant that even the song Motion which I think is amazing. On first listen I was kinda just critiquing things like the chorus.
But like you said after numerous listens this a real good album
