The PopMatters writers guide recommends that record reviews run somewhere between 500 and 700 words. Sometimes I struggle to get 500 words out of an album and sometimes I have a hard time keeping the count under 700. This isn’t necessarily the difference between a good or bad album. Some very good recordings have qualities that are easily explained while some bad albums have complicated flaws that warrant deeper examination. To put it simply, as far as any art form is concerned, some pieces of work just generate more dialogue than others, often irrespective of actual quality.
I recently submitted my review for Nas’ new album Untitled and I had trouble keeping the word-count down, which ended up somewhere around 1,200. (Editor’s note: watch for the review on Monday.) Needless to say, this album caused me to think a lot — more so than any hip-hop album has since… well… I guess I started to put serious thought into any albums. The dialogue generated by content of Untitled should eclipse that which was generated by the controversy of Nas’ original desire to name it Nigger, which is funny because I was afraid that that controversy would be the only thing the LP had going for it. I feel like every song on this album deserves to be seriously discussed. I brushed over their essences in my review. Even at its extraordinary length, the piece still feels to me like a general assessment.
In an effort to explore the themes of this album in more depth as well as further explain why I think this is such a special record, my intention is to conduct a track-by-track analysis of Untitled in a series of posts on this blog which should be viewed as a companion to my review to give a more complete appraisal of the project.
THE SONGS
Queens Get the Money
This was produced by Jay Electronica, who has been billed as the “next big thing” in underground hip-hop. A synthesis of J Dilla and Stones Throw, he crafts a beat that consists of only two alternating, off-kilter piano samples and no drums. Nas’ rapping, similar to the styles from which the production draws, sounds more like an a capella poetry recital that ostensibly ignores any discernible rhythm in the pianos. Some hardcore underground fans might view this as one of Nas’ best-ever tracks while more mainstream rap fans might hear this as only an odd mess of noise.
Nas’ lyrics for “Queens Get the Money” serve as an introduction to the world that Untitled was made to address. A world in which “niggas still screaming, paper chasing / But presidential candidates is planning wars with other nations over steak with masons.” For the “pregnant teens give birth to intelligent gangsters, they daddies faceless”, Nas offers love through his music: “Play this, by ya stomach / Let my words massage it and rub it / I’ll be his daddy if there’s nobody there to love it.” He goes on to address the detractors who only want from him another Illmatic and “Pray ‘please God, let him spit that Uzi and the army linin’ / ‘that shorty doowop rollin oo-whops in the park reclinin’” and states, “Hip hop was aborted, so Nas breaths life back into the embryo / Let us make man in our image.”
In the end, the eerily hectic quiet coupled with Nas’ transcendent poetry make for a great introduction to perhaps the most philosophically and thematically complex album of his career.
To be continued…