Magic 2
If, at any point over the past three decades, Nas’ status was ever in question, his 2020s run with Hit-Boy shut down any and all such speculation. The Queensbridge-bred rapper earned his spot in the GOAT debate well before the critically acclaimed and award-winning *King’s Disease* dropped in 2020, and the full-length sequels to that album only strengthened his position, not to mention his already legendary pen. Yet when *Magic* dropped on Christmas Eve 2021, listeners felt the difference. This was Nasir Jones operating on a decidedly different vibe, rapping for the love of it for a half hour straight over some of his go-to producer’s most gratifying beats. A sort of modern-day parallel to his archival *Lost Tapes* compilation, *Magic 2* serves his fans with a veteran’s ear and a dexterous flow. “Abracadabra” offers a rigorous recap of this era of his career, nodding back to his past while marveling at it all. He pulls off a Queens coup with the homegrown “Office Hours,” reuniting with 50 Cent on record for the first time in some 20 years. Hit-Boy’s instrumentals vary between the understated chill of “Black Magic” and the melodic boom-bap revival of “Pistols on Your Album Cover.” The closing bonus of “One Mic, One Gun” with 21 Savage feels less like a victory lap than a leveling up.
Nas and Hit-Boy cook up another collaboration, a low-stakes mid-career rap album to show that one of the genre’s icons is still in decent fighting shape.
There’s an oft repeated truism about Nas that he peaked too early; scaling the Himalayan heights of genius on ‘Illmatic’, some venture that the Queens