Be sure to subscribe to our playlist, The 40 Best Nas Tracks Not on Illmatic, right here.Nas’ 1994 debut Illmatic is not only considered his best album, but is regarded as the best hip-hop album ever, full stop. And with good reason: that album revolutionized the genre. Nas captured the ruinous glory of post-crack N.Y.C.. By suggesting that drugs were both empowering and destructive, his lyrics alternately embraced and rejected the idea of ghetto glamour, etching out bits of hard-won wisdom amongst Nas’ piercing observational storytelling. His word-drunk, casual cadences redefined how emcees could rap. And this was all done over peak boom bap production from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Q-Tip, among others.But, at this point, it’s boring to talk about Illmatic, or to say that Nas lives it its shadow. It’s a boilerplate narrative, and a lazy, rote mythologization. To be honest, many of the ideas and even a few of the observations I made in the first paragraph were recycled from the various times in my career when I’ve been tasked with paying homage to that particular lodestar. But what happened after Illmatic, and the various ways that his fans and critics have reacted to that output, is a lot more interesting.In the ensuing years (and decades), Nas continued to evolve and experiment, cycling through different personas and tackling difficult concepts, both personal and political. He wasn’t always successful; there are peaks and valleys, and he failed as often as he succeeded. At times, his work has been baffling and self-annihilating, full of contradictions and strange discursions. For every blazingly brilliant observational detail, there’s a weird sex rap or a confounding historical inaccuracy. And Nas, himself, is frequently unlovable. He’s aloof and enigmatic. He’s flirted with messianic imagery and has been accused of abusing his ex-wife. Sometimes it seemed that his fans -- and I count myself among them -- spent as much time apologizing for him as listening to his music. But, the truth is, we’ve hung on. We’ve bought into the idea of his brilliance; we’ve subscribed to his narrative. Sure, it’s a messy and uneven journey, and it’s frequently hard to stomach him, much less listen to his music, but, in a way, that makes him feel more human. He’s not a face on Mt. Rushmore, and he doesn’t carry the extra-human weight of aDylan or B.I.G., but his flaws ground him, and bring his flashes of otherworldly brilliance into stark relief.There has effectively been five distinct Nas periods. The first is Illmatic, which is a deeply autobiographical work that captures key parts of Nas’ childhood. By the time that he re-entered the studio to record 1996’s It Was Written, he had largely abandoned this direct approach. Taking a cue from Raekwon and Ghostface -- who had, the year before, released Only Built for Cuban Linx -- Nas took on the persona of drug lord Nas Escobar. His cadences seem were more calculated and precise, alternately more accomplished and less poetic, and though some of the imagery from that album was still culled from Nas’ childhood in the Queensbridge projects, tracks such as “Live Nigga Rap” and “Street Dreams” were conscious fictions -- Miami-sized coke rap fantasies that were cinematic in scope. He would continue mining this persona over his next two albums, Nastradamus and I Am. The artistic failure of those two albums has been widely overstated -- it’s hard to entirely dismiss albums that produced tracks like “Project Windows,” “Nas is Like,” and “NY State of Mind, Pt. II” -- but by the turn of the millennium, there was little doubt that the Nas’ Escobar persona had run out of steam, so Nas switched it up, beginning with 2001’s comeback album Stillmatic and continuing with 2002’s mid-period high-water-mark God’s Son. His narrative strategy here was more straightforward and reflective, which many took to be a return to the autobiographical raps of Illmatic, but tracks like “Get Down” and “2nd Childhood” were older, wiser, and less nihilistic. They were the stories of a survivor, and not a soldier. And though the role of the “street prophet” was always part of Nas’ persona -- see “Black Girl Lost” from It Was Written -- this period also saw him increasingly turning to socio-political themes. It felt that Nas had reclaimed his glory, and, for at least a minute, his fans reemerged from their closets and re-appointed Nas as the GOAT.This particular stylistic era reached a climax on 2004’s Street’s Disciple. There were moments of greatness on that album, but it was a messy, sprawling double album, and was a relative commercial disappointment. When, in a 2011 interview between Nas and Tyler, The Creator for XXL magazine, the Odd Future frontman admitted that Street’s Disciple was his favorite album, Nas seemed shocked. But Tyler’s reaction is understandable. The album contains some genuinely brilliant material, and the fact that it’s been overlooked makes it seem more personal to his fans. It’s something that we, and we alone, own. Still, the lukewarm reception caused Nas to recalibrate. To put it bluntly, Nas was aging. He was a wealthy, veteran rapper who, at that point, was over 10 years removed from the street life and struggling to adopt a credible public persona. In lieu of this, he withdrew himself from his music, and released a string of high-concept albums that were oriented around a series of thematic conceits. Hip-Hop Is Dead, from 2006, looked at the supposed-demise of hip-hop. It was a moody album that mourned the genre’s childhood innocence and the inondation of commercialism. It was by no means brilliant, and I can’t imagine anyone putting it in their top 3 Nas albums, but its melancholy made it compelling. The follow-up, 2008’s Untitled, looked at race relations in America. The album was originally called Nigger, which, as you can imagine, garnered a sharply mixed response. Nas was still considered a commercial and cultural force, and the title drew criticism from camps as disparate as Al Sharpton and Bill O’Reilly. Eventually, Nas conceded to the pressure, and named it simply Untitled. Putting the controversy aside, it wasn’t a particularly great album, but there are some crucial tracks, including the spare lyrical workout “Queens Get the Money,” and the crunchy, aggressive “Money Over Bullshit.” But it’s legacy was tainted by allegations that Jay Electronica had ghostwritten some of the tracks. Though never proven, it put Nas fans in a familiar space, making excuses and equivocating.Regardless of the album’s authorship, at this point, in his career and in his life, it’s fair to say that Nas had lost his narrative. He was no longer at forefront of hip-hop, either culturally or commercially, and his marriage to R&B singer Kelis had produced a child but ended in a divorce (years later, Kelis would claim that Nas had abused her; and regardless of whether or not that is true, at the very least, it pointed towards a tumultuous relationship). He did what many of us would in his situation: he took some time off. 2012’s comeback album Life is Good was Nas’ most personal work to date, and one of his most compelling. It’s a deeply ambiguous work -- the cover finds him clutching Kelis’ wedding dress, and the entire album is coated in ennuie and disappointment. The opening track, “No Introduction,” is a biography-in-miniature and directly tackles the dissolution of his marriage. Over a lush production from Miami production unit (and frequent Rick Ross collaborators) J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, the song begins with Nas embarrassed, standing in line for a free lunch at elementary school, and ends with the admission that he’s aging and seeking an ever-elusive closure. This sense of melancholy is present throughout that album. The track “Bye Baby” tackles his divorce head-on, while “A Queens Story” traces the arcs of his friendships, and ends with the starkly ambivalent image of Nas the “only black in a club of rich yuppie kids,” getting hammered as he recalls the images of his dead friends.Life is Good would’ve made an appropriate swan song, and he could’ve rode out in the sunset at this point with his legacy intact, but, of course, this didn’t happen, and the follow up, 2018’s Nasir, felt like a retreat of sorts. It was billed as a collaborative album with Kanye West, which seems like every hip-hop fans wet dream (at least in 2005). And while there are certainly flashes of greatness (most notably on “Adam and Eve,” where Nas wrestles with his legacy, both to his public and his children), the emcee sounds strangely detached. He’s abandoned his narrative raps, and his ability to twist the details of his life into poetic imagery fail him. “Not for Radio” more-or-less recycles the vibe and themes of “N.I.*.*.E.R” from Untitled wholesale, except with much-diminished returns, while the seven-minute-long “everything” feels maudlin, and strangely anchors itself around an anti-vaccination rant. But most of all, it's what's missing that's important. Considering that Nas has always been such an honest and forthcoming emcee, it's odd that he didn’t address Kelis’ allegations of domestic abuse. Nas is far from the only pop culture figure to suffer from such allegations, and there has been no supporting evidence, but his silence reads as guilt. Nas fans have defended him many times over the years for a variety of transgressions, but this is probably the most troubling.But, like I said in the beginning, it’s not easy being a Nas fan. At times, he seems god-like and invisible, while at others, he's impossibly bitter and even loathsome. But you take the good with the bad, and hope the former outweighs the latter, as it frequently does. If he would’ve ended his career after It Was Written, he would’ve left the hip-hop with two concise, blazingly brilliant albums, and would’ve been talked about in the same breath as Biggie or Pac, but his subsequent material has revealed him as being merely human, but, in the end, we’re still here, for better and worse.
Beyonce is a national treasure. She’s not someone who requires a critical or commercial reappraisal. She’s had her missteps here and there, but we’ve all known since near the beginning that she possesses a gift that’s nearly unparalleled in modern R&B. So it makes sense that her b-sides and deep album cuts are going to be great. Al Shipley, from the blog Narrowcast, provides a really great overview of the highpoints. It’s a fun playlist that takes a reveals special moments from a very known commodity.
Sonic Youth covered a lot of ground in their career. As high-art CalArts castaways turned Downtown NYC No Wave noise pushers, they largely abandoned traditional song structure on their first releases for bursts of detuned guitar shrapnel. As the ‘80s turned into the ‘90s, and mainstream music began to get heavier and stranger, they became the curators of rock’s brief but wondrous plunge into experimentalism, and though this brief foray into the mainstream changed rock, it also changed them, and, for a brief second, they almost became the new normal. This is wild playlist, however, doesn’t even approach “normal,” and demonstrates that the experimental instinct never receded, but was channeled to the various side projects, covers and one offs that represent some of the most self-consciously weird music of the past few decades. They provide a dark, gnarly cover of Madonna’s “In the Groove” under the moniker Ciconne Youth, while YOKOKIMTHURSTON pairs Yoko Ono with the alternatives formerly lovestruck duo for atonal vocal shimmering. And who knew that Nancy Sinatra stab at a comeback included covering a Thurston Moore song? This isn’t so much a playlist you listen to -- much of it, in fact, is barely listenable -- but something marvel at, which makes it a necessity for Sonic Youth obsessives. -- Sam Chennault
Captain Beefheart was a man, but also an idea, and to write a straightforward piece about him here seems antithetical to his essence. He had a mustache sometimes and other times he had a goatee; sometimes he wore a fedora and other times he wore a cowboy or top hat. Despite having no musical training, he played numerous instruments. Occasionally, he composed at the piano, which he did not know how to play. He was friends with Frank Zappa, who produced Trout Mask Replica. His music is indisputably its own strange amalgamation, but it was still as directly tied to the confusion of the ‘60s as any music ever was, fusing blues, beat poetry, jazz, rock ‘n roll, psychedelic, noise, and avant-garde. His voice was almost magical and he could shift between gravelly falsetto and rumbling baritone at the drop of a harmonica. To try to make sense of Captain Beefheart is pointless, and furthermore, it goes against his very being. Sure, he can be understood as a social phenomenon, but this playlist isn’t about that. It’s called “Captain Beefheart Insanity.” Just go with it.
To state the obvious, Chance the Rapper is a good emcee! The Chicago rapper has a nice, soft voice that telegraphs his “boy next door” charm. He mixes up his flows from verse to verse (and, sometimes, line to line), so things never get monotonous with him. And while he’s not a syllabic-stacking, thesaurus-thumping rappity rapper like a Kendrick or Nas, he’s able to draw thematic through-lines through his tracks and (especially) albums that give his work a narrative focus and arc. In short, he’s more of a performer than a technician -- which is awesome -- and, to be a little more abstract, he’s more of a feeling than he is a place, and that feeling (joyous, personal, a little pious) defines his tracks.This works perfectly marvelous for his own music, but it can make his guest verses hit or miss, but, when the energy works and the vibes align, it’s awesome. Kanye West basically fashioned much of his 2016 album The Life of Pablo around Chance’s swaggering choirboy euphoria -- Yeezy even began to adopt Chance’s trademarks yelps -- so Chance feels more than at home on the deconstructed gospel of “Ultralight Beam,” and the lumbering, twilight R&B of SZA’s “Child’s Play” mines much of the same quixotic nostalgia that framed Chance’s 2016 album Coloring Book.This, of course, requires some alignment or compromise on the part of the hosting artists, but as Chance is a marquee star, and a guest spot from him is becoming increasingly coveted, more artists are willing to go there, which is just fine with us.
Like this playlist? Love vinyl and jazz? Buy all the songs mentioned here and much much more on vinyl at Wayout Jazz.A musician’s-musician all the way through his brief but influential career, Eric Dolphy amassed a long list of guest appearances to help supplement his supburb solo albums. While most jazz fans know of his stints with both Charles Mingus and the John Coltrane Quartet, there remains a treasure trove of other collaborations that showed his true intellectual style and willingness to experiment based on nothing more than mutual respect of those artists whose visions he believed in. Don’t be put off if that sounds pretentious. He was not one to choose art over beauty, and time will reward repeated listens by exposing deeply emotional playing and thoughtful arrangements. -- Wayout Jazz
Frank Ocean is a great artist, but not a particularly gifted vocalist, at least not in the traditional sense. His range is rather limited, his phrasing is straightforward and voice is somewhat generic. His power lies in the risks he takes, as a musician, songwriter, and as a personality. There are few albums of the past decade as adventurous as Channel Orange, and there have been few celebrities who’ve navigated the media machine as seamlessly and eloquently as Ocean. Stripped of the context of his own music, his guest turns work best when he’s allowed to be himself; either in the prickly politics of “Church in the Wild” or on the laconic, SoCal anthem “Sunday.”
This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you.Kendrick Lamar’s albums are holistic, meticulously crafted meditations on the idea of blackness in America; they’re novels disguised as albums, and one gets the sense that every couplet and every bass lick has been labored over. All this is great, but sometimes you just want to hear Kendrick rap. This is what made his untitled.unmastered outtakes album from 2016 so enjoyable, and also why his guest verses are always so charming. The span of artists on this playlist reflects the central tension in Kendrick’s own music; the transcendent, post-electronic jazz of Flying Lotus nestles beside the rickety soul street reportage of Schoolboy Q. Navigating the space between those two poles is Kendrick, who moves forward and raps his ass off.
We here at The Dowsers adapted this playlist from Marshall Bowden’s “10 Great Forgotten Bob Dylan Tracks,” a listicle the writer put together for Paste magazine. Admittedly, the word “forgotten” is overstatement. Seeing as how Dylan is one the most analyzed artists in the history of recorded music, there simply isn’t a whole lot in his catalog that hasn’t been obsessively chronicled. Headline hyperbole notwithstanding, Bowden proves a knowledgeable fan with a sharp ear for minor gems. There are no missteps here. Each and every cut succeeds in helping paint a fuller picture of the icon’s vision. If you’re a Dylan fan looking to move beyond his classic albums and songs, this playlist will make a great guide into the deep end.
Right in the wake of Kurt Cobains tragic death in 1994, Billie Joe Armstrongs rascally sneer became a regular fixture on MTV. Green Days stoner punk was ripe to flourish in such a bummed-out climate—they channeled the angst and malaise of grunge through scrappy, jittery old-school punk, threw in a little sardonic silliness, and knitted it all together with some undeniably delicious pop hooks. Throughout the 90s, the Bay Area trio embraced the idea of being rebels without a cause (and with nothing to do: see "Longview"), but by American Idiot—released just prior to the 2004 presidential election—they again captured the cultures growing unease, this time in a nation that looked and felt vastly different than it did a decade prior. "American Idiot" may be their greatest rebel anthem ever, but it certainly hasnt stopped them from unleashing more seething, politically-charged pop-punk that has been just as timely. -- Stephanie Garr
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
