With a rambling piano that invokes the image of soft rain falling on parched earth, Nas' ninth album begins. And at about the same time you begin to doubt the father of Illmatic the weathered voice of one of Hip Hop's biggest influences, Nasir Jones, cuts in with a biting heat that has been missing since his Queens Bridge days. Many might say this is a return to form for the “rap king”, others still will say he doesn't sound like himself and they actually hate him but none of this dialogue matters. Nas has managed to create with Untitled an album outside of music’s limitations; producing art that will define the 21^st Century; regardless of whether you like his beat-selection.

 

This isn’t the sort of album you really want to drop on the heads of the uninitiated. Nas’ explicit message is at once personal and universal. And while racism certainly isn’t a new subject for music, Untitled approaches it with a ferocity that is totally consuming.

 

 

When the original title for the album; N*gger was expunged after US retail stores refused to stock it, Untitled took on a whole new relevance and importance. This is no better demonstrated than in the album’s first single ‘Hero’. The heartbeat of the album is a Polow Da Don beat and a passionate Nas engaging with ideas of responsibility and purpose as well as his immediate present: “So untitled it is, I never changed nothin’ / But, people, remember this: If Nas can’t say it, think about these talented kids with new ideas being told what they can and can’t spit / I can’t sit and watch it, so, sh*t, I’mma drop it / Like it or not, you ain’t gotta cop it / I’m a hustler in the studio cups of Don Julio / No matter what the CD called, I’m unbeatable”.

 

Untitled is a political album, it is a social album, it is a bumping album, that holds nothing back. So much so that I turned down the volume and looked nervously over my shoulder while listening to Nas’ tirade against biased news reporting in ‘Sly Fox’. His balls-out criticism of one of the world’s most powerful men is nothing short of heroic.

 

In a perfectly weighted album, Untitled reaches the ultimate high with the last track ‘Black President’. Unlike the glowing adulation of other songs dedicated to Barack Obama’s campaign, Nas uses the words of another black American leader (Tupac Shakur) to reference both his hopes and reservations about the Presidential candidate. And when you listen to the track’s marching drum and the echoing tome of yet another assassinated black leader, you realise how fragile a thing hope is in America right now and why Nas made this album.