When DJ Khaled came out with ‘Nas Album Done’ on his 2016 release Major Key, a track that showed Nas at his best, fans of hip hop rejoiced and began their wait for some nasty Nas excellence. Getting two Nas albums in the space of a year is a strange proposition for fans of the New York rapper, who have been used to waiting for four or five years between releases. It’s no easy listen, but bleakness is where Nas excels, evidenced again on “Black Zombie," with rhymes such as, “Let's all get down and get up / victims walking 'round with Down's Syndrome, all stuck / fainting, shouting, catching Holy Ghost in church / scared to do it for ourselves 'less we see somebody doing it first / we begged, we prayed, petitioned and demonstrated / Just to make another generation - black zombies.” Then there’s the heartfelt “Poppa Was a Playa/Fetus” with its first-hand depiction of an upbringing as heartbreaking as the one Ghostface Killah rapped about on “All That I Got Is You.After the anticlimax of Nasir, Nas finally delivers the goods on his latest release. The lyrical sharpness may have faded a little but it’s still there in lines like, “That was an uncanny era, guns in my pants, yeah / X-Clan hair, with dreads at the top of my fade / homicidal feds on the blocks where I played b-ball / that's when I wondered was I here for the cause or because / 'cause Ray Charles could see the ghetto / was told to stay strong and I could beat the devil.” It’s the same voice that once so vividly described a childhood played out in dire circumstances. From the opening track, “Doo Rags,” it’s obvious this is the storytelling Nas from Illmatic, and not the overblown, excess-driven Nas that emerged after his debut. Fortunately, with The Lost Tapes what we get doesn’t feel like a throwaway hodgepodge of misfires or filler. When a song doesn’t make an album’s final track listing, it’s often for a reason.
Keen to keep the momentum going until then, Nas and Columbia Records unleashed The Lost Tapes, a compilation of tracks left on the cutting room floor during sessions for previous albums including Stillmatic and I Am… (1999). The jury is still out in 2017, but back then, many awarded Nas the victory in the infamous battle with Jay-Z, thanks to the scathing “Ether.” The attention reenergized Nas as he headed towards the release of his next studio album at the end of 2002, God’s Son. It arrived in 2002, a year after Nas had reaffirmed his superior status in the rap game with Stillmatic. The Lost Tapes sits towards the higher end of his back catalog. It makes being a Nas fan exciting and frustrating, but he does at least always keep us guessing. There are highs (2001’s Stillmatic, 2002’s God’s Son, 2012’s Life Is Good), lows (2000’s Nas & Ill Will Records Presents QB’s Finest) and everything else that falls somewhere in between. The consensus about Nas’ career trajectory goes something like this: he debuts with the undeniably classic Illmatic (1994), shifts to a new sound with his 1996 sophomore effort It Was Written, and then spends the next 20 years releasing a mixed bag of albums that thrill and disappoint fans and critics in equal measure. Happy 15th Anniversary to Nas’ The Lost Tapes, originally released September 23, 2002.
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