Nas - King’s Disease (Discussion Thread)

[Goat poster]

This is why Andre 3000 is not gonna drop a solo album

He knows fans are unrealistic.

He said in a podcast with Rick Rubin that he is diagnosed with social anxiety and he absolutely is bothered when every verse he drops now a days is picked apart with a fine tooth comb.

Im starting to get it...

It’s also why Dre never dropped Detox.

atleast the gawd Nas just does what the fukk he wants and says fukk the critics

 

[Ty-Fife]

This is why Andre 300k is not gonna drop a solo album

He knows fans are unrealistic.

He said in a podcast with Rick Rubin that he is diagnosed with social anxiety and he absolutely is bothered when every verse he drops now a days is picked apart with a fine tooth comb.

Im starting to get it...

It’s also why Dre never dropped Detox.

atleast the gawd Nas just does what the fukk he wants and says fukk the critics

GOAT shyt

 

[Funcrusher]

I agree but it’s been a long time since nas managed to make an album that didn’t have something skippable.... for me. since Lost Tapes he hasn’t released something completely solid and even that had everybody’s crazy.

Some people love the songs I skip though and that’s what makes Nas who he is. His albums have been uneven for YEARS. But he always tries to do something interesting and when he succeeds it’s WAY better than most, but people focus on their version of perfection instead of just being happy they got some dope songs.

It’s not unreasonable to want a perfect album from him bc he sets the bar, but expecting one over and over and then being let down is just dumb at this point.

I agree, as pretty much every album he does has a Zone Out or a Summer on Smash. But to criticize those songs people here go all types of mad because he is their goat. Then he's "trying new things" or "having fun". But what's wrong with expecting someone who is considered the greatest to not make trash songs?

 

[RAW_SPK]

Nas is the only rapper who has to make damn near perfection for one sect of his fans/hip hop fans in general to be satisfied (I'm kinda on that side, not fully tho)...

Then on the flip, he is handled with the softest, most delicate kid gloves ever by another side of his fandom/standom who can't even admit that his clear misses are misses, lol. That's why on here it's like night and day with the bickering, some say no matter what he does no one will give his shyt its proper respect because it aint Illmatic...then others say no matter what he does no one will give his shyt its proper beating and panning because it's Nas.

You get it

 

[criminology]

I agree, as pretty much every album he does has a Zone Out or a Summer on Smash. But to criticize those songs people here go all types of mad because he is their goat. Then he's "trying new things" or "having fun". But what's wrong with expecting someone who is considered the greatest to not make trash songs?

Nothings wrong with wanting it but expecting it after so many years is sort of silly. He just hasn’t been that type of artist for a long time, despite how he started.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

This is why Andre 300k is not gonna drop a solo album

He knows fans are unrealistic.

He said in a podcast with Rick Rubin that he is diagnosed with social anxiety and he absolutely is bothered when every verse he drops now a days is picked apart with a fine tooth comb.

Im starting to get it...

It’s also why Dre never dropped Detox.

atleast the gawd Nas just does what the fukk he wants and says fukk the critics

I'm gonna play a little bit of Devil's Advocate, at least in regards to Dre. And I'm sorry ahead of time for the long post.

There are a lot of reasons why Dre never dropped Detox that go beyond people picking apart music with a fine tooth comb. I mean yeah, people do pick shyt apart. But that's been the case ever since the internet age of music, forums, and especially social media.

A lot of artists simply choose to not even read reviews or look at what fans are saying. It sounds old-fashioned, but that's always an option.

Dre is TOO MUCH of a perfectionist, to the point where it creates "paralysis by analysis." He overthinks everything. The dude will sit in a studio for 4 weeks just tweaking the mix of one snare on one song.

There's the total opposite approach, where Jay-Z recorded 2/3rds of Blueprint in 1 weekend, and Currensy, Gibbs, and Alchemist recorded Fetti in 7 days. A lot of music that gets released super fast is dope. A lot of it is not. And a lot of it is in between.

I guess my point is that good, quality music can be made rather quickly, and overthinking is almost always bad for the artistic process. Just Blaze is an elite producer and said if he couldn't finish a beat in 30 minutes that he'd scrap it and start over, because it was going to sound forced. A lot of the best beats ever by Pete Rock, RZA, Primo, Alchemist, Madlib, Just Blaze, and many others were infamously made in under an hour, and many as little as 15-20 minutes.

I'd argue that Dr. Dre really has overthought almost everything since Chronic 2001. Say what you will about Relapse, and the hate that album gets, but Dre locked the world out on that album, and the production isn't bad at all. He didn't overthink it. He locked himself away with Em, and knocked it out fairly quick.

So Dr. Dre is just as responsible for the impossible hype to live up to behind the Detox album as any of his peers, fans or critics are. According to Nottz and Just Blaze (who both produced on Detox) they said there have been multiple versions of the album that sounded just fine, and would've been perfectly enjoyable for casual fans.

 

[spliz]

Exactly. Eminem gets it way worse. Some people think Eminem hasn’t dropped a good album since 2000. They say his beats are trash, his songs are corny, his lyrics are still immature/no growth etc.

Eminem has made some of the worst shyt I ever heard in my life after 2004. And that nikka gets passes for shyt that Nas or no other rapper would get.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Eminem to a certain degree, cats want his shyt sounding a certain way too.

I guess I agree with that. Maybe off this forum. On here, I think a lot of cats at this point are damn near happy when Em doesn't end up using dope beats from dope producers that could've gone to other people. I used to want Em to keep using Havoc, Sid Roams, Alchemist, Mr. Porter, and Just Blaze. At this point I'd rather their dope shyt just go to other people.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

This is facts. It’s a weird mixture of impossible standards and no standards. I’m a fan but I’m not a stan for anyone. I don’t grade on a curve, I won’t give someone rap AOTY by default just because they’re my favorite artist etc.

Hov gets to work with all types of producers without fans demanding he call Ski Beatz or Premo. I don’t care who the producer is: give Nas hard, up tempo drums and you’ll get something worth listening to.

I get the vibe that Nas goes out of his way NOT to work with people that some of his fans would like him to. Almost like, "fukk you, I'm gonna do what I want to do." He seems to be maturing past some of that, because a lot of Lost Tapes 2 was actually not lost, and recorded specifically for the album. The QB Politics joint by Pete Rock was recorded recently, and so was the Alchemist joint.

So I think he's doing what he wants to do, but also realizing that he doesn't need to go out of his way to avoid working with producers that were on Illmatic, etc.

And BTW I think Hit-Boy is underrated, and I'm looking forward to whatever they've got.

And regarding Primo. Primo is more difficult to work with than a lot of people realize. The fact that Primo and Nas never did a full album is often blamed on Nas, and Primo is always on some "I would be down to do it anytime", but there's a reason why the last time Primo worked with Nas and Jay was almost 20 years ago, and it's not all the fault of Nas and Jay.

 

[FreshAIG]

As far as Nas fans go, to be all the way objective, I do believe a lot of the overzealousness and protectiveness from his hardcore fanbase, comes from Jay-Z praise in the media. Jay over the last 15-20 years has become a media darling, and his misses aren't nearly as criticized as Nas' are, and some of his "hits" are more championed than Nas'. That plays a huge role into why Nas fans feel like they have to be guardians of his legacy and sometimes show extreme adulation in a way to overcompensate for the lack of balance by which they are judged.

I don't particularly believe Jay's work in the last 10 years has been significantly better than Nas' (maybe slightly, overall quality wise), personally. However, Jay has created such a iconic legacy outside of just music, just as a brand and a business, that even if these people in charge of bigger platforms do feel Jay has made a misstep they won't be so quick to say it. Whereas Nas has not built that. For whatever reason that may be. Nas doesn't have the same relationship with people who are in control over the narrative of the culture, so there's really no relationship to nurture or protect. So that need to tip-toe around Nas' missteps aren't there, and people have no issues amplifying them.

Nas fans feel him and Jay should be equally critiqued, since they are basically the A1 and Ab of Hip Hop royalty when it comes to living Hip Hop artists. They're both Mount Rushmore levels but only one seems to be treated as such in the mainstream.

 

[FreshAIG]

Eminem has made some of the worst shyt I ever heard in my life after 2004. And that nikka gets passes for shyt that Nas or no other rapper would get.

To his white fan base for sure, but he is overly criticized, imo, on here and in general. I'm not the biggest Eminem fan by any means, but he gets super busy with them lyrics. But people treat him like he's complete ass.

 

[spliz]

To his white fan base for sure, but he is overly criticized, imo, on here and in general. I'm not the biggest Eminem fan by any means, but he gets super busy with them lyrics. But people treat him like he's complete ass.

This is the Coli fam. Not real life. These nikkas is corny and overcompensate. There’s no middle ground on this site.

 

[spliz]

As far as Nas fans go, to be all the way objective, I do believe a lot of the overzealousness and protectiveness from his hardcore fanbase, comes from Jay-Z praise in the media. Jay over the last 15-20 years has become a media darling, and his misses aren't nearly as criticized as Nas' are, and some of his "hits" are more championed than Nas'. That plays a huge role into why Nas fans feel like they have to be guardians of his legacy and sometimes show extreme adulation in a way to overcompensate for the lack of balance by which they are judged.

I don't particularly believe Jay's work in the last 10 years has been significantly better than Nas' (maybe slightly, overall quality wise), personally. However, Jay has created such a iconic legacy outside of just music, just as a brand and a business, that even if these people in charge of bigger platforms do feel Jay has made a misstep they won't be so quick to say it. Whereas Nas has not built that. For whatever reason that may be. Nas doesn't have the same relationship with people who are in control over the narrative of the culture, so there's really no relationship to nurture or protect. So that need to tip-toe around Nas' missteps aren't there, and people have no issues amplifying them.

Nas fans feel him and Jay should be equally critiqued, since they are basically the A1 and Ab of Hip Hop royalty when it comes to living Hip Hop artists. They're both Mount Rushmore levels but only one seems to be treated as such in the mainstream.

good take.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

To his white fan base for sure, but he is overly criticized, imo, on here and in general. I'm not the biggest Eminem fan by any means, but he gets super busy with them lyrics. But people treat him like he's complete ass.

A lot of his lyrics are trash though, right? He started doing these dad joke style punch lines around the time of MMLP2 and a lot of them are cringe worthy to the point of me truly not believing any other emcee as technical and talented as him would ever get a pass for.

Would anyone let Nas or Jay live it down for saying someone booty was heavy duty/doodie like diarrhea?

 

[T.he I.nformant]

I agree on both sides as well and I’m a huge Nas fan.

I think Nas sometimes gets too much sh1t for his albums

his first two were classic imo and Stillmatic and LIG were damn good.

All the greats even Jay-z have 2/3 classics at most so the idea Nas has put out a lot more subpar music and way less classics then other greats is overblown imo

At the same time his ear for beats is very poor at times and for an all time great he does have way too many mediocre To halfway decent albums for someone with his talent.

he’s stated he does the weak beats purposely because he doesn’t want his lyrics overshadowed if that’s the case it’s mistake

it’s still MUSIC and about entertainment I don’t care how great the lyrics are if the beat is trash

When has he said I pick wack beats to rap on?