>I think this year is extremely deep with good albums, but
>kinda light at the very top in terms of great albums.
>
>So this is an album I can see being slotted very high, or
>somewhere in the middle of all the good albums depending on
>how it connects with you.

I can get with this, except I'd say that it's deep with some *very good* albums, not just good -- which in some ways makes it even harder. My top 10 favorites for hip hop this year will pretty easily be very good to great records (imo) with a lot of solid candidates left on the floor. And of *those* records, I wouldn't begrudge anyone's slotting them in their own top 10.

I guess for me, even after a few listens, this record easily falls in that very good but not quite great camp. And I *am* thinking of it as a record: Nas is killing it here on almost every track, but there's some lackluster beats and hooks, plus one or two songs that mostly tank for me (WTF SMH might be the biggest miss).

Drop a few cuts from the tracklist, sculpt this a little bit more in terms of both sequencing and engineering, and I'd probably feel differently.

>As for me, I’m liking it more and more. Gotta keep
>listening to see where it ends up for me. Nas really makes it
>sound effortless to be this good, this deep into his career.
>It’s amazing.

I think his lyrical journey from KD I to here is really interesting. I put 1 on yesterday to revisit; it's definitely the weakest of the four so far, and while he's sounding good lyrically, his performance was nowhere near what has developed from II onward. I wonder if this might be what keeps some folks skeptical and unwilling to hear how good these recent records are: if they heard KD 1 and got that stuck in their ears, they may not be hearing II, Magic, and III for how fresh they are.

(At the same time, though, are there the one-liners that stick with you almost from the first listen?)

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~