Their partnership has proved rewarding – “Me and Hit-Boy, they say we like the new Gang Star,” he crows with relish on Wave Gods – as anyone who caught this year’s King’s Disease II will know: it was terrific, lighter on its feet than its predecessor, 2020’s King’s Disease, marked by increased collaboration between the two, injected with a vibrancy and panache little heard in Nas’ latterday oeuvre it seemed he was capable of raising a cheerful smile, at least under Hit-Boy’s auspices. If some of his lyrical preoccupations and focus haven’t necessarily moved with the times (“Dope dealers, street hustlers, pop cases, throw dice on pavement, cop chases,” he raps dextrously on opener Speechless), at least Hit-Boy’s production is there to remind you it isn’t 1996, and, best of all, it rubs off on Nas himself: he sounds the most enthused in years.
Dismiss it at your peril, however it is a remarkably solid and engaging piece of work. It contains a lot of time-honoured Nas attributes: tireless mention of specific New York locales, self-mythology on a Biblical scale, that unmistakable mingling of streetwise philosophy and bookish black consciousness.
All the same, Magic, dropped as a surprise present on Christmas Eve, rounds off a productive 18 months for the 48-year-old veteran. He is seldom a lacklustre MC, yet often evokes a journeyman professional from rap’s golden age keeping up a higher work rate than his peers for the sake of it not a man who has nothing to say, though a man who has said something vaguely similar before and possibly better. There was a point when Nas looked to have surrendered to that predicament: fans and critics alike may argue precisely when that was, and he has never truly put out a completely worthless or unsalvageable album, but few would count Nasir, the Kanye-produced LP from 2018, among his best, as if to illustrate the point, coming six years after Life Is Good, simultaneously called a return-to-form and uneven.
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