REVIEW: NAS - MAGIC 2

4/5

23K Magic. 

How about another 'Magic' trick? The way Queens MC Nas has been releasing albums since the pandemic, you would have thought this was back in the golden era when he was the planet's most prolific rapper. Trading bars and barbs with Jay-Z like Biggie and Tupac, when these friends were formidable foes. Since locking it down, Nas has been working on his latest crowing achievement. The gold bars of 'King's Disease', concluding last year with its Holy Trinity third part, which made sure all other pretending rappers to his throne were merely wearing masks like COVID. In-between all that he pulled 'Magic' out the 2020 socially isolated hat with prolific producer Hit-Boy. If 'Disease' is 'Stillmatic', then this rabbit takes you back to iller times like hey presto. Now with another unexpected drop like Drake of 'Magic 2', Nas is back making real rap hits with the boy that could conceive its own trilogy come next calendar. 

"I'm a magician, you should listen, it's never the same tricks/2020 when we did the first one, five album run, not a cursed one, it's a blessed one/By the time y'all hear this, we be halfway through the next one", Nasir Jones preludes on the opening act 'Abracadabra' like the steel of a Shaquille O'Neal heavy-hitting 'KAZAM!' What's a great trick, if you can't come back and explain how it's done? But the God Son MC will never reveal his secrets like cutting the grass, so the snakes will show. Now, this may not be as 'Black Republican' big as his beef squashing on stage teaming up with S. Carter, but putting in 'Office Hours' with 50 Cent is certainly something we never expected to see like KD and Magic mixed with 'Dumb and Dumber' references. Working magic like Lloyd Banks until all the hate disappears. Teasing, "Ha, ayo Fif', I might put my next album out on G-Unit" like that time we thought he was making 'The Pledge' to sign to rival Ja Rule's Murder Inc imprint. Curtis "Billion Dollar budget" Jackson who once signed Mobb Deep, M.O.P. and Ma$e to the money, rapping, "Innocent victim/Stick 'em, get 'em, book 'em, good you got 'em/Glad you took 'em/Black and wasn't lookin', headshot," like when he used to teach you 'How To Rob'. 

More 'Black Magic' like Common is given with Jones' 'Magic' shtick as this eleven-track epic, like all the classic half-hour hip-hop albums, gets deeper and darker. Moving in 'Motion' and hallowed Hit-Boy beats that feel as hallmark as all the hip-hop heads nodding along in Carhartt hoodies. But for your work wear like an 'Unauthorized Biography Of Rakim', it's 'Bokeem Woodbine' that gets real personal. A song as stellar as the character of its acting namesake. "Neil Young with a bounce" rhyming, "I'm bent off good wine, like Bokeem Woodbine/Home reading a script, lightin' up from a good line/Not no cocaine, this that crack though/She asked for my passcode, she got what she asked for (Ouch)." Now you know Nas' password ain't password. Cornering a new market for classic song titles, with 'Earvin Magic Johnson' he also gives us the best Lakers related song since the Red Hot Chili Peppers 'Salute To Kareem'. Or better yet Anthony Kiedis' own 'Magic Johnson' rap over purple and gold superfan Flea's bass back in those 'Mother's Milk' days. It's showtime for 'Magic 2' with Nas lines like, "On my Earvin Magic Johnson, I'm enterprising/I keep it ghetto like the hood before they gentrified it/I might burn this b#### down, Left Eye, Andre Rison/I can't trust you built for cuban links unless we tied in/Shout to Rae and Ghost/Can it be all so simple? One of my favorite quotes/From 42nd Street, days of pimps wearing suede loafs/That McDonalds is still there where we had to trade blow."

That Times Square Virgin Megastores and Tower Records may have gone like the album age, but the man that still makes LPs is here to stay like golden arches for the record. Platinum plaques hang in the office of Miss Jones' son instead of filling the cavities of a whole host of rappers who will never be as long in the tooth as Nas', rap sheet of big blockbuster billboard hits for his own great American book of rhymes. 'What This All Really Means' is lyrics like "The feelin' of the first time seein' your name on a flyer/It just was yesterday, picture that on the day you retire/And they still shocked and amazed, I made it up higher/'Cause I came up with them hot heads that played with the fire" on this eighth wonder are engraved in hip-hop stone. Reminiscing on those plastered salad days like Springsteen treating down Hammersmith Apollo posters in London, declaring him the next Dylan. The Mass Appeal of this album like Gang Starr will 'Slow It All Down' as the new perfect De Niro and Scorsese partnership of Nas and Hit-Boy make legendary lasting legacy like Premiere with this sequel. No slump, because these guys are no sophomores now. 

'Pistols On Your Album Cover'? Nah, f### that! Nas has some shots for you like put your hands up with this 'kiss of death. "Eyes blurry, sayin' goodbye at the cemetery/I murder n####s on wax and forget where they buried/This the hardest s### since Rakim and Eric B/Or pistols on your album cover just like BDP", awakening a crate of classics whilst adding a new one to the deck in these modern days. It's just like the classic conclusion and reunion with 21 Savage on the single and bonus track, 'One Mic, One Gun', that could see a whole best of both world's collaboration album like October's Very Own' for the 'One Mic' rapper. That's all we need right now and Nas says, "No back and forth, I did it back then, I do it right now (Woo)/They tellin' me that I'm the G-O-A-T, I been here for a while/GOAT, love me today, hate me tomorrow, no switchin' my style/21, Yak, y'all get together, be big for the South (The globe)/But look at me now, damn, y'all, look at me now (Uh)/Whatever I do is New York, you hear that s### all in my vowels (Grrt)." As 21 counters, "Ain't no back and forth, ain’t no left or right (21, 21)/I got King's Disease but I move like a knight (21, 21)/Rappers bandwagon tryna get some likes (21, 21)/I do it for the fam', never for the hype (21, 21)/When you turn to legend, no such thing as relevance (21, 21)/They must’ve forgot that I'm a new rapper that got integrity (21, 21)/All in the media and blogs, that's just a place I don't care to be (21, 21)/Most of these n###s wouldn't say s### if they was ahead of me (Hit-Boy)" for these two kings about to take the throne together. Can't you see it happening? Don't you believe in this kind of magic too? TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Playlist Picks: 'Office Hours (Feat. 50 Cent)', 'Bokeem Woodbine', 'Earvin Magic Johnson'.