In honor of The Higher Concepts opportunity to open up for Nas February 6th up in Lansing, Michigan I have decided to review Nas's newest album. On top of us opening up for this hip hop legend, I have honestly been listening to this album on repeat in my car since the day it was dropped. Now personally I have always appreciated Nas's albums. Illmatic, of course, is one of my favorite hip hop albums of all time and throughout the years I have been impressed by many of his songs such as, I gave you power, where Nas raps from the perspective of a Gun and Rewind, where Nas tells a story in reverse, but I have never really fallen in love with another Nas album since Illmatic. So I was skeptical going into this newest album. For me, the newest effort from Nas was so relevant to what I have been learning about in my life that I instantly fell in love. Nas's head seems to be in the exact same place as all of the members of The Higher Concept. We are both on a quest for the truth about who really runs this world. What some may call conspiracy theories and others would call hidden truths, are explored throughout this entire album. Most songs deal with the issues of race and responsibility and others deal with this hidden ruling class that we are trying to search out. My favorite song is Louis Farrakhan in which Nas brings his choice to try to expose these hidden truths to light and discusses how probable it is that he might be killed for voicing these opinions. "No revolutionary gets old or so I'm told / you get left full of bullet holes when you tell the people go free / its just a matter of time until they try to take me" I fully recommend this album for anyone who like hip hop with a strong message and want to learn more about the uphill battle we face to get to the bottom of what is really going on in this world.
flow - 5
lyrical content - 5
production - 5
album-ness 5
Overall - 5
A PERFECT SCORE!!!
all of the ratings will be out of a 5 point system. obviously we won't be rating horrible albums, so all of the albums SHOULD be in the upper range, but who knows, one of us could be having a bad day when we do the review. BUT DON'T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT!
flow - is how the emcees ride the beat and what their cadence is. this may also include evaluation on the emcees' voice and tone.
lyrical content - is what the rappers are ACTUALLY SAYING. we know that nobody listens to anything but the beat nowadays, but bear with us.
production - is the quality of the beats and other musical content on the album. thank god for 9th!
album-ness - how all the songs are cohesively arranged on the album and the overall feel of the album.
overall - self-explanatory.
