So hip hop isn't dead after all, though you might not know it listening to Nas's first album since he rang the culture's death knell two years ago. After headline-grabbing hype sparked by Untitled's original title – the Wal-Mart-rejected Nigger – the final product is disappointing (Unfulfilled Promises might have been a better backup title). Of course that's pretty much what we've come to expect from Nas, whose last few albums seem assembled from samplings of his former selves: Illmatic's rugged street poet (Nasty Nas), It Was Written's bling-bragging gansta-superstar (Nas Escobar), and Nastradamus's crap-spewing couch potato (um, Nastradamus?).Untitled might be the first to be dominated (in spirit if not in actual skill and style) by a new Nas, the rap industry's political unconscious. Sadly, the record comes off like its shortest track – 'Project Roach', a horrendously muddled pest-project dweller analogy – a good idea poorly executed. Nearly half the 15-song album investigates the contemporary semantics of "nigger", but only a couple of those songs prove genuinely insightful (none approaches the intelligence of Wale's 'The Kramer' from his Seinfeld-themed The Mixtape About Nothing, available for free download here). On 'N.I.*.*.E.R. (The Slave and The Master)', Nas simplistically conflates heritage and his own nagging predilection for conspicuous consumption: "descendant of kings/it's necessary I bling/put rims on everything/wear Timbs on every scene". On the breathy, quietly brilliant title track, Nas expands the term to all oppressed classes: "no matter what color you are, everybody niggas/you can stand by and watch or you can march on with us." On the album-closing Obama endorsement 'Black President', Nas seems dangerously close to reducing partisan politics to racial dualism. Conspicuously, that song samples a line from 2Pac's 'Changes', but the late rapper's semantic recuperation of "nigga" on his debut album ("I'm Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished") is still more empowering than most of what Nas musters here.
With all the bloated politics, the good non-"nigger"-themed tracks on Untitled are welcome relief, the bad ones frustrating Nastradamus-era throwaways. The electric guitar-fueled 'Sly Fox' (produced by Dead Prez's stic.man) is an awesome mainstream media attack, and the Busta Rhymes-assisted, Mark Ronson-produced jazzy woman-as-food romp (or is it food-as-woman?) 'Fried Chicken' provides some welcome humor amidst the self-seriousness (bring back the fun, pre-Aftermath Busta!). On the opposite end, laughable entries like the Cool & Dre-produced 'Make The World Go Round' ("Y'all living trendy on pennies/I cop plenty Fendi", good for YOU, Nas), the UFO-themed 'We're Not Alone' (what the fuck, Nas!?) and 'Breathe' (just listen to Fabolous's same-named track instead) should have been excised. Embarrassingly, the best track on Untitled is the lead single 'Hero', an engrossing sci-fi epic of a song. Not since Salaam Remi's 'Made You Look' has an adventurous beat choice pushed Nas's flow to new heights like this booming, trippy, synth-speckled anthem from Polow da Don. Generally though, careless rhymes and poor beat selection (as per usual with Nas albums) makes for some aggravating earsores throughout Untitled, with the good narrowly outweighing the bad. As he proclaims (in a telling, contradictory statement) on the 'Hero' chorus: "can't leave it/the game needs him/plus the people need someone to believe in/so in God's Son we trust/'cause they know I'm-a give 'em what they want." You rarely give us exactly what we want Nas, but we still need to believe in you.
A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.
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