“No longer able to summon his mythical sense of storytelling, Nas sounds lost on his 11th studio album. Kanye’s production doesn’t help, either.”
“On most tracks, not even Kanye's excellent production is enough to save Nasir from Nas himself.”
““I feel like I’m 18 year old again when I make beats for Nas,” Kanye West tweeted back in April, melting the internet in the process. Fans have been waiting six years for a new Nas album after 2012’s Life Is Good; his ‘Nas Album Done’ song with DJ Khaled in 2016 raised hopes one would soon appear, yet nothing materialised; ‘done’ here seemingly meant ‘shelved’. Fast forward two years and now Nas ”
“Nas's latest release proved to be exceptionally poor timing, and not because of its shaky rollout, or the fact that Beyoncé and Jay-Z's surprise album as the Carters quickly overshadowed it. Rather, in the midst of a post-Weinstein era, in light of his ex-wife's allegations of abuse, and after his collaborator Kanye West's political shenanigans, Nasir's hotepian laments come across as disingenuo”
