>My take...it's great to hear an MC of Thought's status work
>with a producer that is more on the fringes, coming with beats
>that are more challenging, avant garde. It's brave, and speaks
>to Thoughts interest in his own artistry.

As a producer Danger Mouse might have been innovative 15 years ago, but his style isn't fringe anymore (if it ever was). The only innovative part of the beats on this project is how badly some of them are mixed vis a vis the vocals. I'm not saying they're bad beats but I wouldn't call them challenging or avant garde. There's nothing surprising here.

I think there *is* some chemistry between the beats/DM and Thought. But it's not something that is coming from the beats being especially innovative.

Nas is still, in a lot of ways, stuck
>in this what's hot now mentality, and seems to want to push
>that he is still relevant. I get that, but would say he is
>kind of taking the safe route by doing work with Hit Boy. The
>last time he went out of the box was with the Damian Marley
>LP...Nas fans, many of them including me, want to see him get
>out of the box some more and work with atypical
>producers/musicians...

You can look at this another way though, which is that in some ways the Thought/DM pairing is *exactly* what you'd expect from a vet who made his biggest mark in the late 90s/early '00s (esp with the neo-soul-ish links).

Nas has had highs and lows with his keeping-up-with-the-times approach but *that's* it's own challenge, perhaps a more genuine one than Thought rhyming over boom-bap-meets-psych-inflected-plunderphonics. The fact that he's found real synergy with Hit Boy and now has three really solid records that *don't* sound like he's trying to remake Illmatic or just "take it back" to a classic sound is an achievement. Hit boy has clearly found inspiration in the soundscape of earlier Nas but he's meshing it with something more current. It's not always successful but I'd argue it's probably more innovative, for both Hit Boy and Nas, than Danger Mouse's work here.

I'm not dismissing the beats on the record, I think they're fine (a few clunkers). But Thought's the star here, not the instrumentals.

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~