>he has gotten a lot better over the yrs as it
>relates to his live performances (much like his contemporary
>Jayz)...

Yep. I saw Nas/Damien Marley last year and they were great. You may say "well that has a lot more to do with Damien than Nas" but Nas brought a lot of raw energy to his performance and I thought they both killed it.

and he did go back to making quality meaningful music
>once he went through his phase of trying to make radio
>friendly music.

Yep. Stillmatic and onward he's been pretty great, IMO. Some misses in there don't get me wrong but he stopped blatantly pandering to radio which has been refreshing.