Jumping ahead five years to 2001, we arrive at the Nas album Stillmatic and the song ‘Ether,’ a take-down of our old friend Jay-Z.
Nas’s previous two albums had been poorly received, so Stillmatic was a comeback record, its title calling back to his celebrated debut. This track was a response to a cut on Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint in which he dismissed Nas as an also-ran.
Nas’s sophomore album, It Was Written, is described by Wikipedia as more “polished” and “mainstream” than its predecessor.
Those might sound like bad words to most indie or rap music fans, but I see it as a sign of hope. Polish is exactly what the first two songs I featured this week were lacking.
Today’s track is a duet with Lauryn Hill, another fact that has me excited. The song was recorded in 1994, when Hill was starting out with The Fugees, three years before her acclaimed Miseducation.
My second Nas track also comes from his debut album, Illmatic, and it’s the one song that showed up on all five of the “Best Nas Songs” websites I looked at to generate this week’s song list.
So according to my very unscientific poll, I should expect this to be the very best Nas song of all. Talk about pressure.
I really enjoyed last week’s exploration of Jay Z, even if I didn’t come away understanding all the hype. I’ve decided to move on to another celebrated rapper this week — Nas.
Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones has been recording for nearly 20 years and is generally named as one of the top two or three rappers to ever spit into a mic. But, even moreso than with Jaz-Z, I am completely ignorant of his music.
I know I don’t have a lot of fellow Morrissey and Smiths fans in these parts, but I was thrilled to have today’s Random Weekend SOTD pop into my headphones.
‘We’ll Let You Know,’ from Morrissey’s best solo album, Your Arsenal, is a tribute/takedown (depending on whom you ask) of British football hooligans, and an extraordinarily effective piece of work.
Meet Me In Montauk 