Hip-hop Is Dead - NaS
Steven Bridge  |  by www.stuff.co.nz. All rights reserved. 8.03 | 12:59

Yes, the title of Nas' (Nasir Jones') ninth studio album is a cry for attention but the New Yorker is one of the few MCs who can legitimately do the screaming.
It's not a new complaint but no rapper encapsulates and articulates the tension between rap's craft and commercialism better than Nas - he spits it out on the opener Money Over Bullshit. He takes careful aim at the rap machine that created Nas the product but carefully distinguishes the product from the person, the streetwise hip-hopper whose rhymes are unequalled in mainstream hip-hop.

But Nas can't reconcile all the contradictions; he speaks of a commercialised game, where everyone sounds the same but scroll through the production credits and find the usual chart suspects - Pharrell, Dr Dre, Kanye West. So is hip-hop dead? Not if this album is anything to go by; Nas even answers the question on Who Killed It?

: "But before she dropped the money bag on the floor and died/She said if you really love me I'll come back alive.

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