The fourth album in Nas’ ongoing series of collaborations with producer Hit-Boy locks into a straightforward vibe.
For the first 20 years of his career, each Nas album was not only a major event, but a departure from or escalation of what came before. This changed in 2020, when he locked into a steady rhythm with Hit-Boy, the producer from Southern California’s Inland Empire who seemed, at the beginning of the 2010s, like he might shape the decade in rap (he produced JAY-Z and Kanye West’s “Niggas in Paris,” A$AP Rocky’s “Goldie,” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Backseat Freestyle” in a little over a calendar year), only to retreat into the quasi-anonymity of expensive pop projects. Since then, he and Nas have been on an unwavering schedule, arriving once a year to drop music that has to this point hovered just above “competent,” a master artist with a workmanlike producer doing earnest work for hire. Their most recent installment, somewhat ironically, was called Magic.
