Nas

Stillmatic

It's no Illmatic

Review Score:

(6/10)
I am not sure what the goal of "Stillmatic" was, to be a recreation of "Illmatic", or a hard album to put Nas back on the map. Whatever he tried to do, it was not completely sucessful. When this album came out, the beef with Jay-z was obviously fresh and it added some hype to the release of the album. In response to the excellent "Takeover", Nas came out with "Ether", which is suprisingly not a good diss record. I would expect Nas to fire back at Jay-z in more of an intelligent lyrical attack, instead he just swears ridiculously at Jigga and not really making too much sense while doing it. Then there's that voice the just says "F*** Jay-z". Once you get past "Ether", you go to the more pop friendly single "Got Yourself a Gun" which is a pretty good track. Lyrically the song is not incredible because it's pretty much Nas saying he's retaking the throne but why does he need to rap about it, all he really needs to do is put together lyrical epics like he does on "Illmatic" and "It Was Written". Some songs just have weak beats like "Smokin" and the old school sound of "Rewind". Nas was able to make thought provoking tracks which one of them being one of the best of his career, "One Mic". An excellent track speaking about the hood and in an interesting fashion, he starts practically whispering and he gets louder and louder until a practical yell. He really gets across his passion on this track and it is easily the best on the album. Another good thought provoking track is "Rule", he used the perfect sample for this song, and he raps about his thoughts on issues going on in the world at the time, around 9/11. The other good tracks are "Your Da Man" "The Flyest", and "2nd childhood is pretty good. Besides that the tracks are decent or not up to par. Overall Nas did not completely come through on "Stillmatic", he could have easily made a better album. He returned to his original style on "God's Son" luckily.

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