For starters, I have always seen Stillmatic and God's Son as "good" albums but not great.

With that said, I decided to take a look at Nas' output from that time frame a little closer.

Stillmatic was released December 2001 and God's Son was released December 2002 with The Lost Tapes in between.

Everyone knows that as great as Nas is, if he had a better Executive Producer throughout his career, his place at the top would be undeniable.

Let's look at this '01-'02 time frame and make this the double album that I Am should've been and Street's Disciple wasn't.

DISC ONE
1 Stillmatic (Intro)
2 Get Down
3 The Flyest (featuring AZ)
4 Made You Look
5 Purple
6 Got Ur Self A Gun
7 Revolutionary Warfare (featuring Lake)
8 Doo Rags
9 You're Da Man
10 Rewind
11 One Mic
12 No Idea's Original
DISC TWO
1 Thugz Mansion (featuring 2Pac)
2 My Way
3 2nd Childhood
4 Nothing Last Forever
5 Mastermind
6 Black Zombies
7 Warrior Song (featuring Alicia Keys)
8 Book Of Rhymes
9 U Gotta Love It
10 What Goes Around
11 Dance
12 Heaven

Do you realize how ill that album would have been. It maintains all of the classic Nas qualities while adding in the more original concepts like Rewind, One Mic, and Book of Rhymes as well as adding in the more musically interesting songs like Thugz Mansion, Warrior Song, and Dance. I believe he attempted to do both on Street's Disciple but took it a little too far out of his comfort zone.

I also left out Ether, Last Real N Alive and Everybody's Crazy on purpose to keep this separated from the infamous beef, outside of a few lines on You're Da Man. I don't think any of those 3 are good enough to make the cut anyway.

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The second point to this post is; when MCs started flooding the market with material every year, I believe the genre took a hit on the quality. It was always no less than 2 years in between releases back in the day.

So...we usually break double albums down to one, but are there other albums that were released within a year of each other that you feel could be turned into one complete classic?

And do you feel this would be a better option or are you cool with artists pumping out albums and mix tapes and taking the good with the bad?

Note that I had to do a few edits on the transitions to make it flow perfect.

Like the Intro into Get Down for example.

It's perfect front to back on its own.

But if you were executive producing Nas during the time frame I used, those songs on The Lost Tapes from the Stillmatic sessions would be in the mix.

That's the point of this post.

…and considered God's Son to be his true "comeback" album. God's Son is stylistically kinda all over the place..but most of it falls into the "great" category.

>…and considered God's Son to be his true "comeback" album.
>God's Son is stylistically kinda all over the place..but most
>of it falls into the "great" category.

Same here. I think Stillmatic got the push because of his response to
Jay which wasn't that great either but damn if it didn't hurt Jay lol

But I noticed how both had great moments...some of Stillmatic's being on The Lost Tapes...which is why I made this post.

I do think if I was picking one, I would go with God's Son thought. There's something dope about that album. Hey Nas and I Can get the skip though lol

>I do think if I was picking one, I would go with God's Son
>thought. There's something dope about that album. Hey Nas and
>I Can get the skip though lol

...was that, at least to my ears, that album was the most honest and open he'd been to that point in his career. I felt like the whole album had an authentic feel to it that we'd never really heard before from Nas. I'm a sucker for the honest stuff so that album holds a special place in his discography for me.

It definitely has its low points, like I Can... and that Bravehearts bullshit (I actually liked Hey Nas... for what it was) but overall I always really liked God's Son and rank it higher in his discog than most probably would.

As for Stillmatic, I love that album for different reasons, not the least of which being the anger and humor he displayed on that album and during that stage in his career. Nas ended up winning the war but Jay can always take credit for waking up the giant, and thank god he did. Nas was on a tear on Stillmatic. I don't rank it a 5 mic album like it got at the time due to some weak beats and a couple throwaway songs, but it was certainly a major step up from I Am and Nastradamous (sp).