I’m STILL mad Drake won that Grammy over Nas. shyt makes my blood boil.
Now about the “bonus” cuts and all that. It was pretty much accepted that the deluxe version of LIG was the “real” version of the album back then. When you went to Best Buy or Target to purchase the CD they had more copies of the deluxe than the standard version. The deluxe also outsold the standard on iTunes. There was fukkery going on in the industry where labels weren’t paying artists for more than 12 songs on an album so a lot of popular artists were releasing “deluxe” editions I guess to combat or skirt that. Good Kid M.A.A.D City, Take Care, Dreams & Nightmares, Finally Famous, and Long.Live.Asap are some examples of big budgeted studio albums released within that era that had Deluxe editions released that were marketed as the “definitive” versions of the projects.
If you look at the reviews for Life is Good, most of the critics reviewed the deluxe edition. Nasty was the official first single and had a video. Nas talked about songs like Black Bond and Roses and their importance to the album.
Automatic skip. The highs were so high that it didn’t damper the album experience. I just tried to forget that track existed. I think they also recognized it was awful which is why they removed it. But yeah I would normally expect absolute magic from Nas and Mary.
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