Untitled Leak

Nas' thoughts..



I think it's great that hiphop is still alive as an art form in that it isn't completely tied down to commercial success. Nas' last album, Hip Hop is Dead, aimed at describing how contemporary hiphop is a "dead" art form driven strictly by the commercial demands of commercial labels. As Nas so eloquently put it:

cause if you're askin, why is hip hop dead?
It's a pretty good chance you're the reason it died, man
It's a pretty good chance your lame ass, corny ass, is the reason it died, man
You don't give a f*** about, you don't know nothing about it
You want this paper, be a hustler
You a hustler, you ain't a rapper

--Nas, Hope, 2006

Regardless of what certain rap critics say, hiphop is art. Hiphop originated as a relatively cheap way to bring inner city communities together through music. Since then it has expanded from a "ghetto secret", as Nas put it, into an international pop culture phenomenon. Teenagers from project complexes to suburban communities freely associate with the style and slang of hiphop. Even through the commercial success of the late 90s, hiphop still lives as an art form. It is still a means of personal expression. For some, notably Biggie and Jay-Z, hiphop was a means by which to express the everyday struggle of life. For others, like Common and Mos Def, hiphop served as a medium of weaving intricate stories of love and hope. For all the beauty of hiphop there is plenty of garbage that critics are quick to point out. For every great poet there are thousands bad ones whose material never reached the public. The problem with hiphop is that it's commercial success has allowed a handful of awful artists to reach the mainstream due to something as simple as a catchy beat or hook. Yet while the music industry is up in arms about copyright law protection and how to milk the most money out of these so-called artists, the real artists have kept rapping, ignoring the $. For example, last year Talib Kweli and MF Doom released a completely free album, Liberation. Albums like theseshow hiphop at it's finest. If only Bill O'Reilly had picked up his free copy..

Having heard Untited in it's entirety, I think it's fair to say this it is the hands down the best hiphop album of 2008. From the start, it was clear that Nas worked to create an album an thought-provoking album. Untitled explores all the different meanings of probably the most offensive word in the English language, also the original title of the album. Ultimately, Nas points to ignorance as the root of modern day evils. In some way, we are all slaves to ignorance and we must do more to turn away from our blind, ignorant mis-perceptions. We need to tear down the walls of ignorance regarding America, people of different ethnicities, races, and socio-economic conditions, hiphop, and life in general. Cop the album.

"Lipstick from Marilyn Monroe blew a death kiss to Fidel Castro"
--Nas, America

"Stop sleeping, start thinking outside of the box and unplug from the matrix doctrine"
--Nas, Sly Fox

"Ignorance, the root of all evil."
--Plato

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."
--Socrates

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.