Nas - Magic (Discussion Thread)

[Surreal]

That's great considering most still don't even know about it and no physicals

They know....Nas fans are pieces of shyt for the most part and don't support. He should just focus his podcast and his business ventures. Don't make no more music....not even features

 

[Ziggiy]

Does Magic have any Singing at all? What was the last Nas album like that?

Never thought about it but your right. There’s no real singing or harmonizing on the album. Even in Illmatic had The World Is Yours hook and the It Ain’t Hard To Tell Human Nature sample with Michael singing.

 

[Artfull Dodger]

I love "Make the World Go Round." It was a radio-friendly track, but Nas went insane on it. Game had a great verse, and Chris Brown was really good on the hook.

Laced in Macy's, don't have it, a hatred addict
I need faces mad with frowns when I'm around, or I'm wasting fabric
I don't feel great until my plush pieces, cause you to suck your teeth
So mean mugging on my clean thugging mean nothing
Women dream I'm their husband
I'm Alex Pushkin, the black poetry-writing Russian, ice disgusting
I started bling, how could you question my direction?
Or my Tom Ford collection, gangstas two-stepping

Def Jam is responsible for a lot of mishaps with HHID and Untitled...Nas had clear concepts for his abums as demonstarted by the Ni**er mixtape but Def jam in a way saw that concept album are not a bankable. Many tracks made for those albums either didnt make the final tracklist or were remade.
Tracks like Who Are You fitted Untitled better than tracks that made the cut.
Make the world go round is another example of 'radio friendly track' needed for a Def Jam album. Nas had the original concept song as this....

So the trade of songs with Game makes sense if u factor lable politics and deadlines. Be Right is way better than Make the world go Round.
HHID has too many features for a "Nas Album" to me too. Untitled for is the only album for me that i change the playlist to include tracks like
Be Right, Who Are U n Be a N*ggr Too

 

[JayBaldacci]

Bro...

1. Vol 3 is no Nastradamus.
It had the streets joints ( So Ghetto / Dope Man)
It had the street/club hit ( Do it Again )
It had the smash hit/classic ( Big Pimpin')
'Its Hot' was a 'fat tape'
'Is That Yo bytch' ....I can't even categorized that. Yall know what it did.

S. Carter and Pop 4 Roc were super trash
So was Things That You Do. But at least he was spitting.

Jigga off the Ruff Ryder was still rocking too.

Vol 3. did what it had to do for his career.

2. Nastradamus was none of the above.
It tarnished his image. I remember it clear as day. It had him looking bad out there.
Even the lead single was embarrassing. Yeah we know it's an EPMD joint. But naaah.

The Intro? Spoken Word by a Shea butter over a keyboard beat? What?!

Coming off Nas is Like we got 'Come Get Me'
That wasn't it.

And I guess 'Family' aged well or whatever but let's get it correct. That was one of the wackest beats I heard that year. That keyboard Ruff Ryder compilation throwaway beat was horrendous.

This was 99. I never heard a beat that cheap sounding on a east coast major release.

Quiet nikkas? i guess that was the dirty south track.
Big Girl? ...yeah
New World? It's not a bad record but it wasn't right for that era, on that album, at the end of the album.

The other records aren't garbage garbage but none of them were strong enough to save the album.

It's cool to disagree but this is when Nas fell from grace. That's why the come back on Stillmatic was so glorious. Dude was in a dark place lol.


Ps: the Shea Butter outro.....smh.




Hydro drops???

Hydro drops kinda bit GZA's 3rd album.

 

[spliz]

Never thought about it but your right. There’s no real singing or harmonizing on the album. Even in Illmatic had The World Is Yours hook and the It Ain’t Hard To Tell Human Nature sample with Michael singing.

Slight harmonizing by Rocky on Wave Gods.

 

[bill]

Never thought about it but your right. There’s no real singing or harmonizing on the album. Even in Illmatic had The World Is Yours hook and the It Ain’t Hard To Tell Human Nature sample with Michael singing.

Maybe Dedicated but 99% of rap albums have singing including Nas

 

[Ziggiy]

They know....Nas fans are pieces of shyt for the most part and don't support. He should just focus his podcast and his business ventures. Don't make no more music....not even features

Bullshyt.


The album was number 1 on iTunes the entire week and number 1 on apple music for the three days and even then stayed within the Top 9. Thats Nas FANS holding down the flag not 17 year old NBA Youngboy fanatics




The truth of the matter is that sales is tied into a lot more entities nowadays. He didn’t release ANY Merch nor did he even drop a digital version on how website, which most Nas fans have been using to procure his projects since Lost Tapes 2. He didn’t release a video, and Youtube video views count towards sales as well nowadays. Mass Appeal JUST released a proper promo little more than 48 hours ago.




Nas himself knows what it takes to move units in this day and age. He debuted within the top 5 on Billboard 200 his last three album releases, and KD2 actually debuted at number 1 on the Hip Hop charts. This particular project for whatever reason is pretty much “No Hype, No Drama, No Bullshyt” and that’s exactly what Nas wanted, or he would have had videos and interviews ready to promote.

 

[H.S.]

I skimmed through it earlier today when it came to mind as an Untitled comparison. First I will say: it's a HUGE step back from Game Theory, which might be the Roots' best album to this day. But it managed to feel darker to me, even more left to what was coming out on Def Jam at the time. I'm just saying it fit that tone I thought Untitled would have, more.

Definitely see where you're coming from. I see it as Nas wasn't trying to make the soundtrack to a revolution, just trying to open up a discussion. You can't have a discussion over that Get Busy beat lol. To me Untitled is a lot more thoughtful than TPAB and some of the other conscience (for lack of a better word) albums we celebrate. Doesn't make it a better album necessarily, but yeah.

 

[spliz]

Definitely see where you're coming from. I see it as Nas wasn't trying to make the soundtrack to a revolution, just trying to open up a discussion. You can't have a discussion over that Get Busy beat lol. To me Untitled is a lot more thoughtful than TPAB and some of the other conscience (for lack of a better word) albums we celebrate. Doesn't make it a better album necessarily, but yeah.

It’s a better album than TPAB. People wanted it to have an aggressive tone when it had a more somber, thought provoking, reflective tone. Untitled is some heat. It’s soulful. It’s just not aggressive.

 

[Ziggiy]

Nas rapped so good on Untitled nikkas was trying to say Jay Electronica ghostwrote the album I mean the NERVE of so called Hip Hop fans

 

[MoveForward]

 

[HHID]

Never thought about it but your right. There’s no real singing or harmonizing on the album. Even in Illmatic had The World Is Yours hook and the It Ain’t Hard To Tell Human Nature sample with Michael singing.

And we need to talk about his hook game, never been so good IMO..

 

[Mike the Executioner]

Def Jam is responsible for a lot of mishaps with HHID and Untitled...Nas had clear concepts for his abums as demonstarted by the Ni**er mixtape but Def jam in a way saw that concept album are not a bankable. Many tracks made for those albums either didnt make the final tracklist or were remade.
Tracks like Who Are You fitted Untitled better than tracks that made the cut.
Make the world go round is another example of 'radio friendly track' needed for a Def Jam album. Nas had the original concept song as this....

So the trade of songs with Game makes sense if u factor lable politics and deadlines. Be Right is way better than Make the world go Round.
HHID has too many features for a "Nas Album" to me too. Untitled for is the only album for me that i change the playlist to include tracks like
Be Right, Who Are U n Be a N*ggr Too

I just listened to "Be Right." He mentions flan and ambrosia in that song just like on "Who Are You." That has to mean something.

Since Untitled has the N*gger Tape, it makes me wonder what the original tracklist was and if the label told him to get rid of certain songs.

 

[up in here]

I agree it had general themes that are still relevant today, but that doesn't make it a good album to me. I just feel like the SONGS were ehh to ok. At that time, the vast majority of rap I was listening to was underground/independent shyt. So naturally the idea of Nas working with Stic Man and Jay Electronica was cool to me. But once Nas started doing that weird shyt with Kelis, marketing the nikka name on jackets and shyt...that's where I started to feel like maybe this is gonna be another "Hip Hop Is Dead" moment where the headline/marketing is more thought out than the music. There were a lot of directions it could have gone sonically, a lot of similar music that was being released at the time. Rising Down came out that same year, and was more successful at what it tried to do. Also a Def Jam release, where the label forced them to put out that wack Birthday Girl song. But at least the Roots were able to get that shyt removed from the album, and they certainly had way less pull at Def Jam than Nas.

Nah, ****** got blocked. The Roots were able to make the album they wanted to make because there was not public pushback. It’s not just about pull, Def Jam was facing a lot of backlash after Nas album was first announced. Nas was doing the ****** hats and jackets specifically because the label was refusing to promote the album once the backlash started. They wanted him to back down. That’s even what Hero is about. Def Jam refused to let Nas release the album the way he wanted. Sure they weren’t about to drop him, but it’s clear that compromises were made to get it released.

conceptually to me it’s still an incredible album and the highs are really high for me. There are a couple of tracks where the production doesn’t quite hit but there are other tracks where it lands perfectly and I feel are some of my favourite tracks from any artist. But overall the album does feel a little incomplete to me, especially after hearing the tracks that were cut from the album. And it’s clear from the release of The ****** Tape that Nas wasn’t fully satisfied with the album.

but it is what it is. I don’t think it’s a perfect album but I do think it’s a really good album.

 

[JustCKing]

He’s technically back with Sony now via their distribution wing (Orchard) so I think it’s more likely we’d get Sony/Columbia era Lost Tapes stuff than Def Jam. And I think the vast majority of fans would prefer that era’s unreleased stuff over Def Jam (Lost Tapes 2) era so it’s win win.

It could go either way because Nas said we wouldn't get music from the Sony vaults. It's also runs the risk of some of the songs containing subliminals and shots at rappers he's since squashed beef with. A lot of those songs were leaking left and right on either as loosies or on mixtapes. He had the engineer delete a lot of the original God's Son album which was him going at the industry. There's what Salaam described as "dusty Street records" that didn't make Street's Disciple, but was enough for a third disc. There's a lot of material from the I Am... and Nastradamus that leaked. Pretty much leaves unreleased It Was Written, Firm, and pre Illmatic songs that Nas teased when he originally announced Lost Tapes 2 in 2003.