I want to start out by saying besides nastradamus, this was Nas’s weakest album to date. Coming off one of his best efforts in the “Life is Good” album and after a 6 year hiatus, we all expected more. What we got was a Kanye west produced album where the production is obviously not synced well with Nas’s lyrics. The album has only 7 tracks and yet you feel like you can’t even get past the second one without giving up on the album. Even with the albums best track in my opinion (Everything) you still get an unnecessary 5 minuets of Kanye humming and The dream feeling out of place in the track. If I were to ranked each song individually out of 10 it would be:
1. Not for radio- 4/10- Weak sequel to Hate me now
2.Cops shot the kid- 6/10- Decent message but a repetitive sample to Slick Rick’s Children story doesn’t work
3. White Label-4/10- Listened to it maybe twice and I’ll probably never listen to it again
4. Bonjour- 3/10- Weakest track
5. Everything-7.5/10- Great beat and lyrics by nas but too much Kanye
6. Adam and Eve- 6/10- Better use of the dream in the hook but nas lyrics are just ok
7. Simple Things- 5/10
45.5-70: 65 percent- Just passed if it was a school grade.