![]() ![]() Similar to 2004’s “ Good Morning,” “Ugly” flips an atmospheric premise (“It’s ugly outside, it’s muggy, it’s money outside/One hundred and five Fahrenheit, thunderous skies”) into a metaphor for societal rot, a tactile slice of life relative to his familiar, narrative-driven methods. Unsurprisingly, these songs are far more habitable than the haranguing fare of 2018’s Nasir and 2020’s King’s Disease. Anything faster is liable to trip him up anything slower and he’s practically comatose. The album maintains a sprightly 95 bpm clip, opportune for its focus on verbal acrobatics over Nas’s usual sermonizing. If it’s fan service, it’s the best Nas song in a decade. A flashy performance with a modest purview, it relays a judicious street code (“I’m tellin’ it like it is, you gotta deal with the consequence/When you run in a n***a’s crib, n***a, you better be ready to sit”) with knowing winks at the fourth wall (“Only thing undefeated is time/The second is the internet, number three is this rhyme”). “Speechless” casts back to the It Was Written aesthetic, with a spoken intro and pealing mandolin instrumental. ![]() It asks that you overlook his mid-career miscues and late-career misanthropy, which is just as well-his listeners have long clamored for a return to ’90s pragmatism, and Magic is the most meat-and-potatoes Nas record in years. ![]() Magic points to hard-earned craftsmanship, the humble cultivation of a blue-collar métier. ![]()
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