DJ Mike Nice just made his tweets for followers only for some reason,
https://twitter.com/djmikenice?lang=en but before he did that, he wrote that Kool G Rap's Fast Life Pt 2 will be on another mixtape and not Please Listen to my demo 2, smh...
Older artists struggle with streams because their fanbase doesn’t use Spotify/Apple/etc. To increase streams an older artist would need a crossover hit or banger that attracts new/young fans. Personally I don’t think Nas is getting that in 2021/2022. Now can I imagine Nas getting a Drake feature/video/single that results in 50-70k first week streams…plus some other logical features (Cole, SZA, Future, Ross for instance)? Sure. I just don’t see that as his direction or interest. And he doesn’t need it. He’s in a great space and I’m hoping he tours next year with that second secret project.
I mean yeah, someone can do a tiktok dance or challenge to make Nas joints go viral. I would give Nas w/ features a listen but don't care much if Nas collabos with features because Nas usually dumbs down his craft to satisfy the feature, even for Jay and Hit Boy on the production. The "next Nas" title probably is now with Cordae and Big KRIT (who also have super loyal fan bases) -- those collabos would actually be worthwhile to listen to even tho neither do big numbers like Cole. Nas shouldn't care that his albums do big numbers as long as he stays relevant and satisfies his core audience without having to compromise or commercialize over. Cole has that RDCWorld1 youtube machine that makes him go viral every time those guys do a Cole video -- nobody really do viral youtube skits for Nas but audio visual propaganda on 3rd party youtube skits is what makes Cole connect to the youth more outside of his music. Nas and r&b collabos just means that Nas shaves off the 3rd verse and makes way for the singer more to do a verse. Nas needs to another collabo w/ Lauryn Hill more than anyone or even a collabo album with just him and Lauryn Hill. Hell No for Future -- you see what happened with Jay and Future collabos...when Nas did the remix for March Madness as a freebie, the reception was mixed AF -- Nas spit his ass off but people still can't stand Nas on a trap beat or with autotune because how his core fans regard him as the flag waver against anything that isn't fundamentally sounding like hip hop on dusty premier beats, which is basically what happens when Nas dropped Illmatic but can't outrun from Illmatic's shadow. Ross goes off topic on every other feature like Accident Murderers and Hard Piano, etc -- Ross can namedrop the song's name in the verse to convince you he is trying to talk about the subject but Ross mostly stays in his own lane and can't rise up to the occasion do a conceptual song like Nas can.
What Nas fans care about is solo Nas joints where he goes super left field into his world on what he is thinking about, where the album would still be relevant 10+ years later, without having to compromise and talk about 'safe subjects' just to satisfy his feature collabos being able to write their verse and dumbing down for the sake of the producer's thumb's up. That secret project of his w/ Dr Dre might get dismantled/shelved because 1) Dre still hasn't released Detox after working on it for 2 decades and it's overproduced AF 2) Dr Dre will most likely egg Nas on to talk that one dimensional "gangsta shyt" like Dr Dre told Rakim, which didn't allow Rakim to reach into his creative bag to have more wide ranging songs and eventually shelved "Oh My God"...the same might happen to Nas -- a couple songs get recorded but the album never comes out or ends up on another Lost Tapes a decade later. If you look at 50 Cent, 50's GRODT had no-name-one-hitter-quitter producers and was widely successful because 50 got to showcase his creativity without the producer's ego getting in the way but 50's Massacre was mostly polished Dr Dre beats while mostly staying on that 1 dimensional hardcore gangsta shyt (even for gangsta "St Valentine's' Day Massacre" type love songs) and sold less. Even if a producer can make good to decent beats, all established producers want to have their input on their beats for what the rapper should rap on it and that just leads into a slippery slope of having the rapper compromise his range for the sake of the producer A&Ring the project and it eventually not even coming out due to egos and characters not meshing together behind the scenes.
We seen these scenarios over and again to the point that we can identify and patternize the downward trajectories for events to come before they even happen. Artist think they are special and this won't happen to them but how many Dr Dre and Nas collabos were actually 'good'? A lot of songs are just botched like Nas is Coming (weird oversaturated choir), Phone Tap (conceptual but voices over radio static is not great for radio hit...still need the version of vocals w/o radio static), Time (unreleased), Sosa Vs State (unreleased), Everyday Thing (Unreleased), Topless (Unreleased), Hustlers (great), Don't get carried away (beat got in the way of the vocals)...most of Dr Dre beats are over-saturated with choir vocals and the beat gets in the way of hearing vocals. Dr Dre is hit or miss depending on who submits the original beat from under him for him to over-saturate with his production and choir ideas. A lot of Dr Dre beats in its raw form submitted by other producers is good enough but goes unreleased unless Dre pushes that beat over the top with his saturation, smh
