Nas

The Lost Tapes

mind-bendingly great

Review Score:

(10/10)
I know Jigga went on record in the NY Times as saying he only started his beef with Nas because he was "bored" and "the game ain't hot." But whatever, he started it, and so the Jigga-Nas debate will probably go on forever. The fact is, Jay-Z has always been a criminally overrated MC. He's got a chilly, sarcastic charm and he's released two outstanding albums (Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint, both great but neither is a true classic), but the God MC? Put it this way, if you gave Jay ten of Sean Carter's lifetimes, an endless stack of notebooks, and all the Cristal he could suck down, he'd still never come up with anything as transcendent as "Doo Rags," the best song on The Lost Tapes and, I think, one of the best songs in any genre of music since, well, at least least "Halftime." In a perfect world, the lyrics to "Doo Rags" would be in the Norton Anthology of Poetry, and Nas spits them with a flow that must be heard to be believed. And that's only the first track on this assortment of leftover odds and ends. Nas fell way, way off for a while (but so, of course, did Jay -- and let's not even get into his awkward, borderline embarrassing verse on "Crazy in Love"), but Stillmatic and God's Son were both fine returns to form. The Lost Tapes is better than both those albums and only confirms Nas' place in the top tier of all-time hip-hop greats. When he's at his best, as he is on The Lost Tapes, few rappers today can touch him.

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