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"Movin' with a change of pace"

Conceptually, Stillmatic raises the bar for hip-hop, and it's about time.
— J. Gotti Bonano, "Review of Stillmatic," The Source, Feb 2002

For me, it's never been so much about selling out as it has been about compromising your artistic vision for commercial gain.
— Oliver Wang, The FNV Newsletter, 1999

This is Nasdaq dough, in my Nascar with this Nas flow. Flip the beat back, now it's all reppin'. Hit the record sto', never let me go, get my whole collection, yo.
— Nas, "Got Ur Self A... "

Prior to December 17, Nas was seeming a little too infamous, a little too likely to be an episode of Behind the Music. The much-lauded brilliance of his first album was looking more and more like a fluke. Looking out his Queensbridge Projects window, Nasir Ben Olu Dara Jones named himself a king, and for all he knew, he was right. Heads and critics everywhere loved Illmatic (1994), and loved the young MC for making it.

What happened next has been well rehearsed. And even if you haven't heard the specifics, you know the story, because it's the usual fall from grace plot: Nas's next album, 1996's It Was Written, moved more units than Illmatic, but disappointed those same heads who so adored the first album. They complained that while the record featured big-name producers (Dr. Dre, DJ Premier, Stretch, and Will Smith's hit-making Trackmasters), the fluid lyrics were had to compete with the record's "commercial sheen."

For anyone else, this shift in tone and 'tude wouldn't have been a big deal; for some artists, it might have looked like a good thing. But coming from Nasty Nas, so prodigiously skilled, so insightful, and so seemingly untainted in his first outing, the gangsta-inflected It Was Written, tilted perilously close to "selling out." With The Firm: The Album (1997), Nas flexed his power, putting together a supergroup composed of Foxy Brown, AZ, and Nature (with some helpful production by Dr. Dre and a featured spot by Canibus); it was a better idea than execution. The production was increasingly slicker, the rhymes more player-performative and less introspective, and Nas Escobar, the artist's Mafioso persona, was tired before he ever stepped on the scene.

Following, and in quick succession, he dropped I Am (1999), Nastradamus (1999), and QB's Finest (2000), each step more disappointing than the one before: concern over his commercially inclined decline turned voluble and full-blown. While evidence of Nas' potent grace remained intact on each (I Am's "Nas Is Like," Nastradamus's "Project Windows"), taken as a group, these albums were mostly depressing reminders of the damages done by success. (Three words: "You Owe Me," the track he recorded with Ginuwine? All I can say is, thank goodness he didn't team up with Mace, for both their sakes.). The generally-agreed-on nadir for Nasir was I Am's "Hate Me Now," a perversely self-loving and self-pitying -- and startlingly self-involved -- track whose video is so overkilled that even featured artist Puffy wanted out. He actually tried legal means to stop the video's release, suddenly alarmed that it showed Nas, from dramatic low and high angles, trudging with cross and crown of thorns, forlorn and beset. Now be serious: if P is getting a clue before you do, you need to reevaluate.

It looks as though Nas has done just that, though he's come back slowly, for him, waiting a year to release the latest album, Stillmatic. And before that, he took a minute to do the Bono-Puffy-all-star extravaganza for the benefit cover of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" Mainstream and all tied up with post-9/11 flag-waving as it was, the single did bring Nas in a lyricist first, and charismatic performer second. No bling-blinging. No large riding. Just concern for kids who have to deal daily with the street, and not in that cinematic-dreamy "phone-tap" sense.

You might mistake this turn for authenticity, or even an updated, better-looking version of rap-realism, but there's something else going on here, an atonement of sorts. Nas was never a very convincing gangsta, much as he tried (remember his incarnation of a jail cell, in "Last Words" -- "I'ma prison cell six by nine, / Livin' hell stone wall metal bars for the gods in jail" -- a performance that seems equal parts daring, genius, and dementia.

To his credit, Nas never stops. However he has come to comprehend this authenticity game, at least now, he looks more able to keep in it. And, as too many hip-hop and other artists know, authenticity, staying "true" to oneself, often involves repetition. Stillmatic recalls Illmatic, full of acuities, passions, and above all, stories, flowing "like DVD." And oh yes, that little bit of front-page-making beef between Nas and Jay-Z, so profitable until R. Kelly's sex-tape pushed it aside (surely, Jigger would rather be apologizing one more time to Nas' baby-mama than trying not to answer questions about Robert's extracurricular activities). Though Nas has been typically low-key about the battle, commending its showcasing of old-school aesthetics and skills, but hardly wanting to have to talk about it everywhere he goes. "Leave it as a battle of the minds," he told The Blackspot, "That's what hip-hop is."

Stillmatic is all about returning -- to roots, ideals, neighborhoods, dreams, and ambitions. Nas told MTV Diary (6 March 2002), in one of those notorious confessional voice-overs, "What I wanted to show people is that I could do a album and could go full circle in my career." With the new record, he's aiming to "bring it back, do it one time for the street." Of course, in hip-hop mythology, the street sustains cred, allows you to represent as authentic, and inspires you to give and go back to the hood.

For Diary, Nas acts out this fantasy of the street, enduring one of those corny visitations to the old homestead, namely, his old apartment in the Queensbridge Project. He seems genuinely startled at changes in dicor, in particular, the stuffed animals crowding the new resident's space ("Check out the room!"). Waxing nostalgic, he says, "I would have like posters of rappers on my walls, and when that played out, I started drawing graffiti on my walls, and when that played out, there was bullet holes in my walls, you know." And then he remembers himself, when he "was a little dude," posing by the window, to look out on the old view, the one he described so astonishingly well on Illmatic. The camera peeks out at brick apartment buildings, neighbors' kitchens and living rooms, and desolate streets below. Going back can be as excruciating -- and as ersatz -- as going forward.

But "stillmatic," a kind of motion in poetry, appears to be just right, a way to reimagine time and space inside, rather than according to someone else's measure. As the first single, "Got Ur Self A...," reminisces, "My first album had no famous guest appearances. / The outcome: I'm crowned the best lyricist." How stressful that dry spell must have been -- selling crates of units, but catching shit from folks who once called you a prince. "Why would you question who's better?" he asks, "The world is still mine. / Tattoos real, with 'God's Son' across the belly." Would that it were so, that ink made the man. But Nas knows better. He's a storyteller, a messiah, and an aspiring movie star (his belly is real, and it's also a function of Hype William's fever-dream of a movie).

The video for "Got Ur Self A..." has Nas inside a church, humbled, praying for guidance, but hardly shy about declaring and refining his skills. If Nas lost sight of what constitutes juice, now he's plainly recalled it. At last, he also appears to understand (rather than accommodate), what he's up against, namely, MTV ("I'm livin' in this time behind enemy lines"). Now, when he claims, "It's the return of the Prince, the boss. / This is real hardcore, Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit's soft," you get the sense that he's game-playing -- these easy targets exemplify the popular passing for the profound. Nas continues, listing his many, and yes, so impressive, material assets: "Sip Cris, get chips, wrist gliss, I floss," "Stick shift, look sick up in that Boxter Porsche. / With the top cut off, rich kids go and cop The Source. / They don't know about the blocks I'm on." Where you're from, that's what counts. Where you're from lets you claim all kinds of knowledge and authority.

This has always been the problem with authenticity when you're performing it, much less consuming it. It can't be real. So the question becomes, how to gauge and evaluate it, as a commercial achievement, as well as a life experience -- they're not always the same thing, though they do tend to blur. The video for "One Mic" follows the track's rhythm, building slowly to a crescendo of declaration and rage, then coming back, to seek a way to make a difference, with that precious one mic. The video opens on the street, looking out from a car windshield, the camera wide to show buildings lit up, lights bleeding, the image dissolving on traffic passing, then a bedroom window, glowing yellow. Cut to Nas, alone, his room spare and muted, a light blazing from the ceiling. He nods with his boom box: his needs are minimal -- "one mic, one beat, one stage, one nigga front" (in MTV-land, this last become one "person," but he's on TRL, and you have to make adjustments. While his room is ascetic, his vision, he's telling you, is vast.

The camera looks at and with Nas throughout the video, inviting you to see the value of one mic, to share the power of articulation, not just fame and fur coats. You peer down over his shoulder, then from the other side of the room. The camera moves slowly toward him, along the floor, then hits a close-up, Nas nodding in time, with time, eyes lowered, contemplative. Outside, his story: kids in their car, harassed by cops, the neighborhood explodes in activity, sirens whooping, escape and chase, as Nas stands stationary, pleading, his arms raised from the street to the sky. He narrates what you're seeing: "Ricochetin' between the spots that I'm hidin' in, / Blackin' out as I shoot back, fuck, getting' hit! / This is my hood, I'ma rep to the death of it, / 'til everybody come home, little niggas is grown."

The vocals crescendo as the action spills out the picture frame, and Nas returns to his room, slow again. To build to the next scene, in South Africa, where a community rallies against the authorities. Nas imagines his leadership here as well: "Everybody gotta die sometime; hope your funeral / never gets shot up, bullets tear through the innocent. / Nothin' is fair, niggas roll up, shootin from wheelchairs. / My heart is racin', tastin' revenge in the air." Translating the street battles waged in New York to a shantytown may seem a stretch, but the particulars are less important than the sentiment and the principle -- abuse by authority must be confronted. The last verse suggests as much, when the images consist mainly of kids listening to the track and making it their own, two girls in their bedroom, a young man in jail, another with head bowed beneath a glaring light in a small space. The cuts come faster, the kids and Nas become each other.

The time is now. And Nas' journey, from self-interest to potential understanding, is tracked in the video, directed by the ever-inventive Chris Robinson. Bringing together these disparate situations and characters, well, it's sort of pretty to think so. "Diamonds are blindin'," Nas insists, and he should know. What is compelling, however, is that the kids' lip-syncing does seem urgent. Quite like the recent videos for Mary J. Blige's "No More Drama" and DMX's "Who We Be," Nas has found a way to make himself look relevant again, or at the very least, like he's paying attention.

As "One Mic" closes, that harsh light in Nas' room seems to explode, then retract, then blaze through the space, anointing and threatening at the same time, a bolt of liquid fire. "I never make the same mistakes," he says, almost willing it to be so. "Movin' with a change of pace, lighter load, see now, the king is straight." It's as if he's trying to convince himself as much as you: "This crazy, I'm on the right track I'm finally found. / You need some soul searchin', the time is now." Just how this time -- now and coming -- will play out for Nas remains unknown.

His recent and very fast past (already he has five albums) doesn't suggest that his new self, wearing beads (including his daughter's necklace), instead of ice, is the only one he's got. As he told MTV's Shaheem Reid in an interview on 20 February 2002, "My mind goes. It takes me on wild trips. I got a lot of issues that I deal with myself, with Nas. ... I mean, I'm cool, but sometimes I put a lot of pressure on myself, and sometimes it breaks me down, or sometimes I need little pep talks to myself, just as a man and where I wanna be in my life."