Battle of the Classic Albums: Jay-Z Versus Nas, Part Three

With Jay-Z and Nas, their careers are already seen as wildly successful, and they are rap's living versions of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They are defined by their classic music, but much their hits have come on albums that while in some circumstances were very good and would been defining moments for anyone else, for their talent and past merits, the albums did not live up to either one of the artists' performances, or were missing elements that hindered the albums from attaining "classic status."

1996: Nas, If I Ruled The World...

Coming with the sophomore album in Nas' career as a professional recording artist, the prodigy returned in 1996 displaying more polish on the mic and taking more chances, but his transformation into a quasi-Mafia rapper made him seem detached from the persona that made him so believable. The album itself is wonderful, and the production of Dr. Dre and the Trackmasters present a slick, movie-like listen, but Nas Escobar seemed unapproachable when it came to the musical recognition.

2000: Jay-Z, The Dynasty Roc La Familia

Actually an all-ensemble group album, Jay decided to take the album in name for himself and record more tracks to lay his vocals on. As the first album to really showcase the likes of the young Just Blaze and Kanye West as Roc-A-Fella producers, The Dynasty had many high points that propelled The Roc as a label and a group to new heights with "Give It To Me" featuring Pharrell, "Change The Game" and "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" with R. Kelly. Emotional tracks such as "This Can't Be Life" and "Soon You'll Understand" highlighted the album, as well as Beanie Sigel and Jay as artists, with some uncharted emotional depth, but ultimately, the use of Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek's presence on more than half of the songs weakened the impact of the album itself. If anything, The Dynasty was the stepping stone for the aforementioned Blaze and 'Ye to grow and mature behind the recording booth glass, and gave Jay-Z a way to test his ground for future releases.

2002: Jay-Z, The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse

*2003: Jay-Z, The Blueprint 2.1

To be concise and totally honest, The Gift disc and The Curse disc should have been released as separate albums and compiled with different mixes of tracks from both discs, or the consolidated Blueprint 2.1 should have been released as the primary Blueprint sequel. While The Gift and The Curse were both great in their own ways, the lack of story continuity made the release seem somewhat contrived. It was easy to recognize that one disc was a party album, while the other was a darker contrast, but with no real narrative that was befitting of its title as part of The Blueprint series, if anything The Blueprint 2 was just piggybacking off of the great reception of its predecessor's namesake. Jay-Z and Roc-A-Fella co-founder/producer Damon Dash got it right in re-releasing the sequel as a shorter, tighter album, but it was too late, which is too bad.

2004: Nas, Streets Disciple

In a way, suffering from the overcrowding of relatively good music all the way around, not unlike Jay-Z's The Blueprint 2, Streets Disciple was a very good album. Essentially, Nas felt it was time to release a double album, and he was warranted in feeling that, and he earned that right. Unfortunately for Nas, because of the breadth of material, Disciple could have become two releases that were tighter and more focused. Hits like "Just A Moment" and the street hit "Thief's Theme" gave great insight into the album's content, as well as "These Are Our Heroes" (formerly "Coon Picnic"), as Nas called out Hollywood celebrities like Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Kobe Bryant for supposedly acting as Uncle Toms and/or antitheses of the ideal African American role model, but that is neither here nor there in what stifles Disciple from having obtained classic status. Nas might have been better to release successive separate albums, a la Nelly, or albums in the same year like 1999's I Am... and Nastradamus. There was an Illmatic in Disciple, but like a diamond stuck in coal, it just wasn't mined away and brought to light.

2006: Nas, Hip Hop Is Dead

This album is the closest of any of Nas' non-classic albums to being a classic, sonically. In theory and ideally, it already is, based on the message of what the album conveyed, but the album's main strength also became its weakness, in that while production was definitely good and consistent (courtesy of Salaam Remi, will.i.am, and Scott Storch), it lacked punch in some areas where dynamic tracks were needed. There's absolutely nothing remotely wrong with Hip Hop Is Dead, it's just that it was a bit monolithic. Nonetheless, Nas gave the masses a very impressive album.

2006: Jay-Z, Kingdom Come

Conceived as the return of Jay-Z as a solo recording artist, Kingdom Come was to be a sign of Hova's saving grace toward hip hop; it was not exactly received as such, but it was a good album nonetheless. The strengths of the album that would cause many to fathom the LP to be a classic album far outweigh the shortcomings that keep it away from classic stature, but they do in fact hold it back enough from being seen as on the same level as his earlier masterful works. The strengths that place Kingdom Come high in consideration as one of his best albums range from Jay's varied usage of fresh production with Scyience and B-Money to working on Kingdom under the auspices of the legendary Dr. Dre to Hov's decidedly ambient and exploratory sounds that he chose to deliver his verses on. "The Prelude" may just so happen to be Jay's best introduction track, "Show Me What You Got" was classic Jay braggadocio, "Lost One" and "30 Something" displayed the perfect melding of powers with Dre's piano and bass beats, and the assistance of Chris Martin made "Beach Chair" one of Jay's most interesting and thought-provoking songs in his entire career. What do hold the album back are a few songs that could've been totally left off such as the Usher and Pharrell-featured "Anything" and the Beyonce Knowles collaboration on "Hollywood"-while decent for anyone else, all those songs really did was give buyers of the album names to remember as justification for paying for Kingdom Come in the first place. Ultimately, what Jay could have used most was a couple of true scratch-and-sample-heavy, rugged tracks from DJ Premier and 9^th Wonder, in place of "Anything" and "Hollywood" to give Kingdom Come its unrealized ultimate victory.