{"id":3851,"date":"2012-08-20T10:33:09","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T14:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=3851"},"modified":"2012-08-21T10:28:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T14:28:32","slug":"review-nas-life-is-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/review-nas-life-is-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Nas \u2013 Life Is Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBefore there was an audience to watch us \/ I assure you, there was a process.\u201d Nas has had one of the longest and most tumultuous careers of hip-hop\u2019s mainstream, and as the he claims above, he\u2019s been loyal to his methodology regardless of his circumstances. Instead of running from or flaunting his wealth, he embraces the contradictions inherent in being a multimillionaire who still raps about the problems of life in the hood (\u201cI been rich longer than I been broke, I confess\u201d). Nas may be a legend, but he has never rested content with that status.<\/p>\n

That said, I regarded\u00a0Life is Good<\/em>\u00a0with a very healthy dose of skepticism when I first heard about it. When has Nas described life as good? Why is he posing like he\u2019s Drake on the cover? Do I really want to listen to another hip-hop album about disillusionment with fame and fortune? Why is Rick Ross featuring on a single about faked personas? Fortunately, Nas himself seems to have dealt with these questions while making the album and answered them with subtle mastery.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccident Murderers,\u201d the Ross featuring single in question, is a case in point. Sandwiched between two thematically cohesive and evocative verses from Nas is just about the plainest bologna verse that you\u2019re likely to find from the Maybach Music boss this side of\u00a0Deeper Than Rap<\/em>. It\u2019s delivered with his typical, unflinching bombast that is of course catchy as hell over the soulful No ID beat, but the lyrics feel recycled and vapid, and conclude with a promotion for his upcoming album. Compare that to the Queens artist, who paints a vivid scene and characterizes the killer, his intended and accidental victims in the space of the first verse with well-chosen details like \u201cside of his mouth toothpick, one eyebrow raised.\u201d He proves that he is indeed a \u201cgraphic classic song composer.\u201d You feel that he\u2019s talking about real people, with real disgust for their killers and a sincere sense of helplessness at not being able to change the environment he escaped.<\/p>\n

Instead of weighing the song down though, Ross\u2019s featherweight verse simply highlights how much depth there is to Nas, and how unafraid he is to embrace the unavoidable paradoxes and ironies of being a major-label rapper interested in making socially-conscious music. Like the guest verse on \u201cAccident Murderers,\u201d \u201cSummer On Smash\u201d is an undeniably thoughtless and formulaic song aimed straight at the charts. The annoying hook gives credence to\u00a0Ghostface Killah\u2019s assertion<\/a>\u00a0that Swizz Beatz shouldn\u2019t be let anywhere near a mic, and Miguel reaffirms his irrelevance with a downright creepy third verse (\u201cFreaks only baby \/ let me take pictures\u201d). In the context of the album though, it\u2019s a tolerable transgression as Nas again sandwiches the executive-pleasing shit between some truly resonant songs.<\/p>\n

Just as his album is prone to these sorts of meaningless pop indulgences, Nas acknowledges that his life, despite his penchant to preach values and condemn the world\u2019s ills, is plagued by addictions. \u201cSo many vices, habits \/ Mine of course, bad chicks,\u201d as he says on \u201cWorld\u2019s An Addiction.\u201d Not even his machine-gun flow can outrun the discontent of modern life, but at least it keeps going, and in this song manages to break through and totally arrest my attention. After painting portraits of the wealthy in discontent, he cries out, \u201cLet go of the illusion, start some restraining.\u201d Even if he\u2019s prone to the same transgressions, he at least recognizes them as such and doesn\u2019t believe in materialism\u2019s mythical contentment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho possesses the testicular fortitude \/ To blow away myths that\u2019s a hindrance to all of you?\u201d he asks on \u201cBack When.\u201d The song extols the virtues of telling about your real life, instead of perpetuating some fictional persona. The famous rappers, to whom he seems to be talking, all did this when they first started, but now the same mc\u2019s \u201cwink at other rappers,\u201d knowing its just a a bullshit image they created to sell records and tickets. He even goes so far as to imply that they\u2019re a part of some controlled state. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if all their rides had federal plates.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, the question remains. When New York can fairly be described as \u201ca big Riker\u2019s Island,\u201d is life good? When you\u2019re a mediocre-at-best father-figure (\u201cDaughters\u201d) and unfaithful and now divorced husband (\u201cBye Baby\u201d), is life good? When Amy Winehouse can only feature posthumously on a song about trying to escape \u201cthe noise in my head \/ the curse of the talented,\u201d is life really good? I don\u2019t think Nas really knows or, if he does, he doesn\u2019t really seem to believe it. Either way, he deserves commending for remaining an auteur within mainstream hip-hop who, at the very least, is willing to give that question some thought.\u00a0[B+]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBefore there was an audience to watch us \/ I assure you, there was a process.\u201d Nas has had one of the longest and most tumultuous careers of hip-hop\u2019s mainstream, and as the he claims above, he\u2019s been loyal to his methodology regardless of his circumstances. Instead of running from or flaunting his wealth, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":3853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3851"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3858,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851\/revisions\/3858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}