“From the time Nas dropped ‘Nasty’ last August, his momentum and relevancy have continued to grow with a slow but unrelenting pace.”
It’s been a minute since people “argued all day about who’s the best MC, Biggie, Jay-Z or Nas” with any vitriol. Hov might have uttered those words back in ‘97, but the argument has lost a bit of its relevancy today. Biggie and Jay are still shoo-ins in the GOAT argument, but the Nas of late is more of a question mark. His last record that made waves, aside from the sideshow of ‘08’s unfortunate Untitled, was God’s Son, released before I graduated high school.
If his appearance on Jimmy Fallon last week was any indication, the days of comfortable complacency are over.
Nas has reemerged from the ether wearing a timely Giants cap (they were filming the show in Indianapolis) instead of his trademark Mets. He’s probably with Eli in Disney right now giving Mickey daps, but I digress.
When Jimmy introduced him, holding up a copy of his latest single “Nasty,” the crowd reacted with a fervor not usually seen on yawning late night television. Was it because Nasty Nas was being backed by The Roots? That probably had something to do with it, but it missed the bigger picture. From the time Nas dropped “Nasty” last August, his momentum and relevancy have continued to grow with a slow but unrelenting pace.
The Fallon moment was an acknowledgement: Nas was back in the conversation.
Even before the Fallon appearance, a guest verse on Rick Ross’s Rich Forever helped cement Nas’s second ascent. On “Triple Beam Dreams,” Nas wastes no time grabbing the mic and your attention, bringing a vivid rawness that’s reflective but never sentimental:
Us blacks kids born with birth defects, we hyperactive
Mentally sex-crazed dysfunctional they describe us
They liars, the end of the day, we fucking survivors
I remember watching Scarface the first time
Look at that big house, that Porsche paid for by crime
How could I sell this poison to my peoples in my mind
They dumb to destroy themselves is how I rationalize
Although his output has been minimal – Nas will never be as prolific as Bob Pollard, and that’s probably a good thing – the scarcity of his releases makes each single, verse and TV appearance feel like an event.
He will never be the MC that reserves an entire wing of a hospital for his pregnant wife and releases a song about his newborn daughter the day of her birth—that’s too all-access. Instead, Nas plays it low-key, using his mystique and enigma to his advantage as he remains partially concealed. The Fallon performance is a pitch-perfect example.
The raucous energy and spectacle of a Madonna halftime show are better served on the Watch the Throne tour.
Nas, on the other hand, takes a more reserved approach, much like his forefather Rakim, that plays to his writerly strengths and slippery internal rhyme schemes.
In this way, Nas is a Joycean hip-hop hero, using for his defense the only arms he allows himself to use—silence, exile and cunning. He may have stepped away for a second, but he’s back from sabbatical and is ready to reclaim his seat at the hip-hop roundtable.
© 1999-2012 Dig Publishing LLC. All Rights Reserved. 
