It feels disingenuous for Kanye to be trading bars with Nas about killer cops when, just a few weeks ago, on Pusha-T’s “What Would Meek Do?,” he proposed that MAGA hats might now give him a pass for driving while black. As you listen to the seven-track project, here are a few things to know going in.Īnd yet there is something of a disconnect between Nas rapping about how Abraham Lincoln gets too much credit for freeing the slaves on a song produced by Kanye, who said slavery was a choice only a month ago a Kanye aligned with Trump and Candace Owens, the far-right thinker who has been an outspoken critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, seems like the wrong person to back Nas’ pro-black sentiments and serve as the Queens rappers sounding board. The Queens rapper’s first full-length since 2012’s Life Is Good is significantly shorter than its predecessor but still filled with plenty of depth to unpack.

And us.” Nasir attempts to contextualize this perception of American ghettos, and the way police officers think about the black people in them, as told through Nas’ perspective. “You got criminals and victims, pushers and users, and some folks caught in between.

“Almost no one is here for a good reason,” a patrolman told reporter Jim Atkinson for that story. Nasir was entirely produced by Kanye West, and its album cover (below) is a Mary Ellen Mark photograph originally shot for a 1988 Texas Monthly feature, “ The War Zone,” about the tragic state of South Dallas during the crack epidemic.

EST): Nasir is now available to stream on Tidal. As of Friday afternoon, the record has not yet hit streaming services, but it can be heard via a live stream of its listening party. Nearly two years after claiming he’d finished his album on a song called “ Nas Album Done,” Nas’ album is finally actually done.

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