The Poorly Accepted Saviors of Hip-Hop
There's something wrong with the world of hip-hop today, and I finally know what it is. The genre has always attempted to walk a fine line between social awareness and exuberant self-indulgence, often times causing a hot, screaming debate between both sides. Sometimes this debate even occurs on a single artist's own album, with alternating songs about how it was to be dirt poor and how it is to be filthy rich. Some artists tend to both glamorize and demonize the experience of poverty, and even do the same about affluence, with an unconscious, self-conflicting irony that I often feel gets lost on almost everyone. That is perhaps one of the single biggest criticisms of people outside of the rap world, and from my perspective it is an accurate one that demonstrates a vulnerability of self-confusion in an otherwise powerful movement.

Last year I woke up one day in Queens of all places, the day that Nas' God's Son was dropping and made it my mission to get the album before anyone else. After finally tracking down a record store in a city I was fairly unfamiliar with (at least as a consumer), I popped it in my disc man and was severely disappointed. The first track, I have to admit, I've always thought was amazing, but after that I felt like it just dragged and dragged, and by the time I hit track 5, "Zone Out," which features perhaps the worst beat ever put on wax, I had determined the album to be a total clunker and evidence of Nas' second huge career disaster, guaranteeing him his place as a punch line in hip-hop history. I played it for my friends a few hours later at my office and they hated it too. It was just flat and uninteresting and boring, or so we felt at the time. I think the most accurate quote about how we felt at the time was that, when we noticed that it came with a bonus disc, I said, "Why include on a bonus disc with an album that has only two good songs on it anyway?"

Coming off the heels of Jay-Z's Blueprint 2, which I thought was amazing from day one, I decided to give it another listen a few months later, only to find that I was totally wrong. You see, the reason why the Jay-Z disc was so strong was that it wasn't what everyone expected. It was a deeply self-reflective creation with well-chosen guest appearances that gave us the best view ever put on record on how the man actually felt. It dealt with issues that you know he was actually going through at the time, such as the attack on the World Trade Center (ironically Jay-Z's previous release, Blueprint was released on 9/11/01, prompting the line on Blueprint 2 that goes, "Rumor has it, the Blueprint classic, couldn't even be stopped by Bin Laden."), his current relationship with Beyonce, and his struggles to be accepted in the rich elite of NYC, while still staying true to his roots. What the Jay-Z album had that the Nas one didn't was that it was also radio friendly. The beats were Jay-Z beats, by the Neptunes and Kanye West, who in my opinion, is one of the best out there right now.

Only One Dismal Track
When I relistened to God's Son, I saw something new that I missed the first time. Everything down to packaging of the album was pseudo revolutionary in the world of organized, major label hip-hop. For starters, he credited himself on the cover as Nasir Jones, his real name, an indication that was a deeply personal effort. The photo of him was more subdued then one would expect from Nas. In fact, it was the first album cover he has been on where he did not look directly into the camera, which was perhaps a reference to the idea that he has been slightly humbled by the death of his mother, one of the predominant themes of the record.

Once I heard the music again, I was hooked on every track except the still dismal posse-cut, "Zone Out." The songs were not made to be radio friendly, they were made to be thought about. God's Son is Nas' largest artistic achievement to date and his most intimate effort at describing exactly who he is, just as Blueprint 2 did for Jay-Z. When I hear God's Son, I hear a modern day Miles Davis or Stevie Wonder. It is, for the most part, a portrait of integrity and blood, sweat and tears, and strong evidence of Nas' own frustration with the current direction of hip-hop.

Despite hating each other...
Finally, both Jay-Z and Nas, two of hip-hop's biggest names who happen to totally hate each other, have defeated that soulless Catch 22 of hip-hop, and released records that are completely honest and real, and unfortunately, probably the worst selling records in both of their careers. They are albums that other hip-hop artists love, but the average fan misses out of because they are so far ahead of their time.

Don't expect either Nas or Jay-Z's next albums to sound anything like these, because it is evident that both are hell bent on self-discovery and reinventing themselves and their art in their current image.

I really should go back and listen to that bonus disc.