Albums Nas & DJ Premier - Light-Years (Discussion Thread)

[HNIC973]

if Jay Z made this exact album, they would've held a parade for him

that's what happens when your last good solo is from 07. 4;44 was Grandpa flow spoken word shyt

 

[MikeStamina]

bro... how you tell him his opinion is misinformed (HIS opinion, mind you). tell him what he needs to stop speaking on.... while defiantly speaking on what nas' is saying like he's texting you his responses?



if you gonna name your album light years, then you gotta take what comes with it. good and bad. and if nas dont care, then why does breh's opinion matter to you?

Wtf is your drunk in the afternoon ass talking about. I literally quoted NOBODY n mentioned NOBODY.

But if the fits ....you know the rest..

 

[New Jeruzalem Journalist]

I could be wrong, I'm not saying I'm 100% sure. I just think it's interesting.

Also...why is Marco Polo all over the album. I'm gonna assume Premo doesn't need help with scratching right. So...is this album full of Polo's drum kits? Which would be another way to avoid samples, alongside the obvious live drums on certain tracks (Welcome To The Underground). I don't know if Ian manages Polo

BTW speaking of the live shyt. Ian has promoted Bass & Bars (Brady Watt) multiple times on his IG. He's the white guy who does bass covers of rap songs, often gets rappers to do live performances with him. Is Ian his manager? Is he the bassist on this album? Not to discriminate...obviously there are funky white bassists out there (Pino Palladino for instance) but having some corny white guy playing grooveless basslines on an anticipated rap album instead of just getting an actual musician sounds like something a manager would do. To get his people paid on every end of the process.

Marco said he would speak on his involvement on the album sometime next week.

Would be ill to hear Nas over some of his production. He's one of my favorite post 2000s producers. The 1st collabo album with him and Torae is 5 mics to me. I played that religously.

 

[JoelB]

Only an “appetizer” he says….

 

[Tommy Gibbs]

I'm running back Sun Rises for the first time in many years and yeah, there's no way Preme is ever replicating anything like this again and expecting him to is disengenuous as hell

People are funny, man

It would cost too much on sample clearances alone. The bomb squad used to use 8-12 samples per song for PE. That would cost over $300k per song to clear samples today. Then there was “fight the power” which had close to 20 samples. These songs simply can’t be made anymore.

 

[Illmagic]

Only an “appetizer” he says….

I like to see an AZ and Nas album with ALC behind the boards

 

[Alexander Wiggin]

Only an “appetizer” he says….

 

[up in here]

This album very much reminds me of Nas’ Street’s Disciple to Hip Hop is Dead era in the sense it’s more conceptual and more Nas doing what he wants to do artistically. Almost feels like a sequel to HHID in a way. Maybe not in terms of the sound but the subject matters, the concepts and the production not being what’s on trend.

And that 2005 to 2008 era is probably Nas’ most polarising in terms of people’s view of his music. So in some ways it’s not a surprise this is getting a similar reaction as it doesn’t cater to a wider audience like Stillmatic say did or the Hit Boy stuff did. This isn’t a criticism as I salute Nas for doing what he wants to do as an artist but it has parallels to the reactions of Untitled or Street’s Disciple

Streets Disciple and HHID were unfocused. SD got pushed back by the label and entirely reworked and the result it was all over the place with no consistent theme. HHID is the album Nas threw together because Def Jam wouldn't let him make the N***** album.

While these albums do show pieces of Nas artistic side, they don't have cohesiveness.

Untitled, while dope, was the edited version of Nas vision. The lead single was specifically about the constraints that the label was putting on him in making the album. I love the album, but I know it wasn't the complete vision, which is why he did the mixtape to go along with the album with songs that didn't make it, which is something Nas never does.

This album is the album Nas and Primo wanted to make. This is their vision. And it's dope.

 

[torcher]

Premo is having a rough year. This, the Roc Marci album & the Ransom album have all been mid.

 

[Cloutius Maximus]

Gotta say that I feel this is the same response any post 2002 Nas and Primo album would've got, no matter if they would have worked on it in 2003 or 2025

nah

I think this would have been better if this came out in 2005

this classic beat is from 2006


what happened to this Preemo




all 21st century DJ Premier beats

 

[Canon]

Only an “appetizer” he says….

New firm album from Dre and trackmasters

That’s what yall deserve

 

[ajnapoleon]

In rap discussions, it’s not enough for you to dislike something. You gotta be completely disrespectful in doing so. Characters chasing content, likes, and reposts by trying to tear others down. The way DJ Premier is being treated today is disgraceful……


I can’t understand why we do that …


It’s never enough to say “I don’t like it … it’s not my speed”


It’s the need to be as disrespectful as possible that always bothers me


Why you have to be disrespectful like bring it hell


What’s the purpose of that?


What do you get out of it?

 

[brianwuzhere]

This album very much reminds me of Nas’ Street’s Disciple to Hip Hop is Dead era in the sense it’s more conceptual and more Nas doing what he wants to do artistically. Almost feels like a sequel to HHID in a way. Maybe not in terms of the sound but the subject matters, the concepts and the production not being what’s on trend.

And that 2005 to 2008 era is probably Nas’ most polarising in terms of people’s view of his music. So in some ways it’s not a surprise this is getting a similar reaction as it doesn’t cater to a wider audience like Stillmatic say did or the Hit Boy stuff did. This isn’t a criticism as I salute Nas for doing what he wants to do as an artist but it has parallels to the reactions of Untitled or Street’s Disciple

This is exactly where I’m at. I don’t even think the Hitboy albums are short on stand alone concepts, but outside of a couple of those albums, the songs often didn’t connect into a single train of thought guiding the whole thing in the same way they did back then. And that’s fine, the goal seemed to be more about dope rhymes on dope beats without overthinking the process, while making up for lost time. But I do miss the era when Nas albums felt like an event and he would always return with something new to say every couple years. Light-Years restores that feeling and regardless of who he works with next, this is probably the last big milestone he could possibly achieve at this point in his career.

 

[ThirdAct]

New firm album from Dre and trackmasters

That’s what yall deserve

I dunno what Trackmasters production sounds like in 2025 but they laced Nas in 96

 

[B. Pumpaveli]

This is cap