producers: hangmen 3, megahertz, nas, large professor, dj permier, l.e.s., swizz beatz, track masters, salaam remi, others.

It's straight up unfair. Nas must be the one that's the closest watched by the public eye, and every album that he releases is first met with doubt. But "Illmatic" was too good, and the rest was, well, often not too good. Hence this cat is under pressure. And as so many other artists have promised before, but rarely actually then came through with, he promised us to get back to what got us to first love him. That's why he calls his new album "Stillmatic", packing more burden onto his shoulders. But is he able to meet our demands, expectations and silence the ones that are shuffling to throw their disses in his direction?

What this album definitely is not able to achieve is to come as dope on the beat tip as the point of reference "Illmatic". On here we get a couple of seriously lackluster beats ("Smokin'", "Destroy & Rebuild", the wack "Breaveheart Party" by Swizz Beatz doing his best Neptunes impersonation, "My Country" or "Everybody's Crazy") or some pop, pre-disco type okay tracks ("2nd Childhood" produced by Premo, "Rule" that features the "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" chorus). We however are also left with a couple of tracks that are rather cool ("Stillmatic", "You're Da Man", "One Mic" and "What Goes Around"), with the unmentioned leaving us indifferent.

But once we dig into the lyrics, we see that Nas remembered that he was once considered the most talented lyricist, whose way to put words together was boasting of visionary and observing skill. And he does plenty of that, like when he discusses the place where he resides on "My Country", or when he discusses the current world situation on "Rule", him spitting the somewhat simplistic rhymes though: "call a truce, world peace, stop acting like savages / no war, we should take time and think / the bombs and tanks makes mankind extinct / but since the beginning of time it's been men with arms fighting / lost lives in the Towers and Pentagon, why then? / must it go on, we must stop the killing / tell me why we die, we all God's children".

At the same time he's made to address some beef, like the one he has with Ja˙ Z, who get a serious lyrical whupping on "Ether": "my child, I've watched you grow up to be famous / and now I smile like a proud dad, watching his only son that made it / you seem to be only concerned with dissing women / were you abused as a child, scared to smile, they called you ugly? / well life is hard, hug me, don't reject me / or make records to disrespect me, blatant or indirectly" or later on "is he Dame Diddy, Dame Daddy or Dame Dummy? / oh, I get it, you Biggie and he's Puffy / Rockefeller died of AIDS, that was the end of his chapter / and that's the guy y'all chose to name your company after?". He's further going against cats on cuts like "Every Ghetto", "You're Da Man" or "Destroy & Rebuild", where not only Cormega is getting mentioned.

And once having served the non-believers, he's got the time to do some showing and proving, what he does on "One Mic", that's maybe the best track on here, but also on "Rewind", where he's telling a story backwards, what then sounds something like: "going reverse, slowly prepared / my nigga Jungle utters out something crazy like, 'go he there' / sitting in back of this chair, we hitting the roach / the smoke goes back in the blunt, the blunt gets bigger in growth / Jungle unrolls it, put his weed back in the jar". And furthermore, Nas is not missing to drop some of his observing verses, like on "2nd Childhood", or "What Goes Around", and the streets are catered to on cuts like "Everybody's Crazy" or "The Flyest".

After the last album having been quite a disappointment, if not to say disaster, getting this record, and being able to enjoy much, if not even most of it (and give it some time to grow on you), Nas has positioned himself comfortably again in the pantheon of emcees, where he rightfully belongs.