Taken as a whole, Nas’s catalog plays something like a Möbius strip. When he was barely out of his teens, he was rapping with a convincing weariness about the things he’d seen, lived, weathered; now, closing in on 50, his music is dotted with vignettes from Koch-era New York so vivid they might as well be in the present tense. This is not to mischaracterize his early work as flatly philosophical — from the beginning, he kept razors under his tongue and Uzis in his winter coats — or to overstate the success of his late-period albums, which can feel obligatory, xeroxes of xeroxes spit out at three-quarter speed. But at his best, Nas has always collapsed age and time in a fugue of shocking detail. This indifference to the normal aging process feels appropriate for someone who’s looked 25 since Pac was alive.
Some critics might argue that 2012’s Life Is Good is an exception to this rule. That LP, which won almost universal acclaim, was sometimes cited as the first major rap album to effectively grapple with middle age. It was framed by Nas’s divorce from the singer Kelis, whose wedding dress is draped across his lap on the cover. In truth, Life Is Good’s best moments are technical exercises or those time-collapsing remembrances. (Its unexpectedly warm ode to the marriage is now colored by allegations of the rapper’s abusive behavior, allegations Nas denies.)
