Hangmen 3, DJ Premier, Nas, Swizz Beatz, Large Professor, Megahertz, Track Masters, Salaam Remi, L.E.S., Baby Paul, Ron Browz

He’s back. After rockin’ and rollin’ with his debut album „Illmatic“ years ago and being only one of two artists ever who managed to drop a hip hop classic with a very first record, Nasir Jones aka Nasty aka Nas Escobar has always been measured by this one and only debut. “Illmatic”, a really classic record, was Nas’ goldmine but also his biggest mistake – all the (solo) records after “Illmatic”, “It was written”, “I Am” and “Nastradamus” were rated considering his first album and were never given a chance to exist alone. In the meanwhile, while people didn’t give Nas as much love for his sophomore records than for his first one, another guy came up into the spotlight: Jay-Z. And, well, fate just wanted him and Nas not to come along together, at least not now, 2K1. Jigga, just equipped with an own hip hop classic (“The Blueprint”), dropped a real answer to “Stillmatic – The Freestyle”, a Jay-Z diss by Nas that rocked clubs and radios this summer. Jiggas answer, “The Takeover”, left Mobb Deep and Nas treated like infants. That’s why people awaited “Stillmatic” – they expect a Nas answer. Well, here it is…

With production credits goin’ to Large Professor, Megahertz, DJ Premier, Swizz Beatz, Track Masters and Nas himself among others, the album mainly goes into a payback direction: Nas claims himself being back – and, in fact, never having been away – in the intro and then takes a big, big shot at Jay-Z on “Ether”, where he answers “The Takeover” and disses Hova in an analytic, calm way. Tracks such as “Got Ur Self A …”, which is nothing else but self defense, or “Destroy & Rebuild”, which shoots at “unloyal” Queensbridge homies such as Prodigy from Mobb Deep, Nature or Cormega, underline the albums main purpose: Nas shows lyrical skills for everyone, claims that the king is back and stuff, and seems to wild out if people manage to provoke him… Nevertheless, those tracks are surely the best of the record.
Besides, there are other tracks that deserve to be mentioned: “Rewind” tells a story from the end to the beginning and is dope as hell, “Rule” feat. Amerie is a follow-up to “If I Ruled The World” and goes deep into the problem of ruling the world and people getting on each other for more power, “My Country” treats the problem of being an African in America. “2nd Childhood” treats people who are not able to assume their responsibility – three verses, three stories about three people on a slow but deep DJ Premier production. The album has it all, hard, aggressive tracks paying back what people said about Nas, deep stories on political topics as well as stories on social problems. And, of course, there’s one or two tracks that are able to rock a party, which is, as far as the album’s success is concerned, not that unimportant…

Well, I don’t know if this guy is “Stillmatic”, but at least he managed to take it back to the roots quite far: First of all, he tells people what he thinks of them, I can’t say whether Jay-Z is better or Nas, but Nas is still in the game, that’s for sure! The deep stories are on the record too, even though they’re not always that new and original. The only thing that I really have to say here is this sort of childishness that overflows the whole album: Nas, Jay-Z talked to you in one verse of one track, you need a whole track at first, then take little shots at him throughout the whole album – who loves who, Nas? I think you take this thing too seriously. Life is not that hard, even though I feel the topics and problems you treat on your record. The rest of the album is quite dope, not as dope as “Illmatic” was, but, ehmm, we had this problem already in the first paragraph.