UNTITLED

Def Jam

Nas is a martyr of his own making, from his shortsighted proclamations about the death of hip-hop and his steadfast resistance to radio-friendliness on down to the original title of this album, which was to be a too-familiar racial epithet up until, inevitably, the needs of commerce trumped the whims of art.

Or maybe Nas has finally figured out commerce. Thanks to the name that never was, this album was a conversation piece long before anyone heard it. On his new single, “Hero,” he addresses the controversy: “Still in musical prison, in jail for the flow/ Try telling Bob Dylan, Bruce or Billy Joel they can’t sing what’s in they soul/ So untitled it is, I never changed nothing.”

Finally, Nas has a cause to match his temperament: his own suffering. And he hasn’t sounded as vibrant as he does on this, his ninth album, in years. On “Sly Fox,” he takes aim at a frequent antagonist, Fox News, and “You Can’t Stop Us Now” is a swaggering, proud stroll. Moreover, Nas still has a gift for the telling detail. “My father was not a banker, neither was my neighbor,” he raps. “When it came to getting paper, who the hell was gonna train us?”

As a thinker, Nas is more blatantly conflicted than even Kanye West. But unlike West, when Nas contradicts himself on record, it doesn’t come off as self-examination; rather, it sounds wishy-washy.

Only someone as stubborn as Nas would have chosen the tremulous, distant-sounding piano loops of “Queens Get the Money” to open his album. But then again, only someone as stubborn as Nas could find a way to deliver such a firm, arresting, if occasionally nonsensical verse atop it. Perhaps not surprisingly, the best song on this album is barely a song at all.

— Jon Caramanica,

The New York Times