Music Review: Nas; Untitled

Man, life is soooo hard....I'm gonna go listen to Jeff Buckley and cut myself.

Nasir Jones is probably Queensbridge's finest rapper to date and he is arguably one of the greatest emcees of all time. He burst on the scene with Illmatic and solidified his legacy with his battle with Jay-Z. However, he's wildly inconsistent and "Untitled" is no different. The album itself was hyped up as the anti-soulja boy and something that would resurrect hip-hop which Nas declared to be dead on his last album. Untitled was supposed to be named something along the lines of "N.I. double G. E. R." but Universal forced Nas to change the album name. I think the problem with Nas is that he doesn't have the charisma that other rappers do. He has the flow, he has the delivery, he has the lyrics but he's missing the drama that Jay-Z and Lil' Wayne and T.I. and other rap superstars bring to the table. Nas is all business and that can be a good thing but I can't get behind this emo-rap that Nas is spewing. He shines on a few tracks (hero, queens gets the money, sly fox) but it just seems like faux-angst that Nas is portraying. He wants to be an activist, a Bob Dylan type performer, but it seems like he doesn't honestly believe everything he's saying. When a rapper is being honest he jumps to a higher level (example: Brother Ali; Forest Whitaker) but Nas isn't being truthful with this album. Nas seems like he's just jumping on the "I hate George Bush/This country's going to Hell in a handbasket" bandwagon. I don't doubt that he believes that George Bush sucks but I doubt that he believes everything he says and I'm pretty sure he is just over-exaggerating, not about the Black man's plight but about rolling TNT into a covenant if he were to go back in time 200 years a la Chappelle's Show. The maddening part about this is that we know Nas has the ability to be on par with the best but he just can't get there. If Nas had left politics alone and examined race relations within a regular album then he probably would've been more successful than he was here. It's sad to say that Jay-Z said more about race in America in "99 problems" than Nas did in this entire album but it's true. This isn't garbage but Nas really let me down with this one.

Final Verdict: 2 SRK eviscerated pillows out of 5.