''Nasir'' is the twelfth studio album by American rapper

Nas Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air ...

. It was released on June 15, 2018 through Mass Appeal Records and

Def Jam Recordings Def Jam Recordings (also simply known as Def Jam) is an American multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It is based in Manhattan, New York City, specializing predominantly in hip hop, contemporary R&B, soul and pop. The l ...

. It succeeds Nas album '' Life Is Good'', released six years prior in 2012. The album features an appearance from

Kanye West Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer. Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...

, who also produced the entirety of the album, as well as

guest appearances In show business, a guest appearance is the participation of an outsider performer (such as a musician or actor) in an event such as a music record or concert, show, etc., when the performer does not belong to the regular band, cast, or other pe ...

from

Puff Daddy Puff may refer to: Science and technology * Puff, a small quantity of gas or smoke in the air ** Puff, a light gust of wind ** Exhalation ** Inhalation * Puff model, volcanic ash tracking model developed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks * ...

070 Shake Danielle Balbuena (born June 13, 1997), better known by her stage name 070 Shake, is an American hip hop recording artist. 070 Shake is a part of the musical collective 070, who have released a mixtape together titled ''The 070 Project: Chapter ...

, Tony Williams, and

The-Dream Terius Youngdell Nash (born September 20, 1977), better known by his stage name The-Dream, is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. His co-writing credits include songs with "Me Against the Music" (2003) for Britney Spears, " Rid ...

. The album is executive produced by West, and is the fourth of five seven-track albums West produced in what has become known as the "

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to t ...

Sessions", with each album being released weekly. It follows the release of

Pusha T Terrence LeVarr Thornton (born May 13, 1977), better known by his stage name Pusha T, is an American rapper, songwriter and record executive. He rose to prominence as one-half of the hip hop duo Clipse, which was mainly active from 1994 to 201 ...

's '' Daytona'', West's '' Ye'', and West's collaboration with

Kid Cudi Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi (born January 30, 1984), also known by his stage name Kid Cudi ( ), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, actor and fashion designer. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Cudi would move to New Y ...

entitled '' Kids See Ghosts'', and precedes the release of

Teyana Taylor Teyana Me Shay Jacqueli Shumpert ( Taylor; born December 10, 1990) is an American singer, actress, dancer and choreographer. In 2005, she signed a record deal with Pharrell Williams' Star Trak Entertainment imprint. Afterwards, she choreographed ...

's ''

K.T.S.E. ''K.T.S.E.'' (an initialism of ''Keep That Same Energy'') is the second studio album by American recording artist Teyana Taylor, released on June 22, 2018, by GOOD Music and Def Jam Recordings. Following the release of ''VII'' in 2014, Taylor t ...

''. ''Nasir'' rose to No. 5 on the ''

Billboard 200 The ''Billboard'' 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine and is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of ar ...

'' and No. 16 on the

UK Albums chart The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts ...

Background

American musician

DJ Khaled Khaled Mohammed Khaled (born November 26, 1975), known professionally as DJ Khaled, is an American DJ, record executive, record producer and rapper. Khaled first gained recognition as a radio host in the 1990s on the radio station 99 Jamz, a ...

's 2016 album ''

Major Key In music theory, the key of a piece is the group of pitches, or scale, that forms the basis of a musical composition in classical, Western art, and Western pop music. The group features a '' tonic note'' and its corresponding '' chords'', ...

'' featured a track titled "Nas Album Done" with Nas which announced the completion of his album. The same year, Kanye West expressed his wish to produce an album by Nas, seemingly promising

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

that he would achieve this. In May 2017, Nas' brother,

Jungle A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century. Etymology The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''ja� ...

, made a post on

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

in a recording studio with the

hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...

#NasAlbumAlmostDone.

Release and promotion

In April 2018, Kanye West announced that he was producing Nas' new album with a release date of June 15, 2018. West later released an incomplete track listing of the five albums he was working on, revealing the Nas track "Everything". On June 12, West revealed a full tentative tracklist for the album, while the album title and cover art was revealed on June 14, a day before release. A listening party for the album took place on June 14, 2018 in Queensbridge,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and was streamed via Mass Appeal's

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

channel.

Critical reception

''Nasir'' was met with generally mixed reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 from mainstream publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

score of 58, based on 16 reviews. For '' The A.V. Club'', Colin McGowan praised

's "lavishly triumphant production" on songs such as "White Label" and Nas' political awareness on "Cops Shot the Kid" but observed filler in the "empty empowerment" of "Everything" and the "late-90s jiggy rap" of "Bonjour"; he concluded that ''Nasir'' was a less-than-definitive experiment for the rapper. Elizabeth Aubrey of '' NME'' wrote: "Whilst stylistically ''Nasir'' may well have plenty of strong moments, its contradictions make it a difficult, problematic listen: it’s the silences on here which so often deafen." She praised West's production and the album's brevity, as well as Nas' lyrical maturity and social awareness, however noted that the political beliefs shared sometimes "ring hollow", being at odds with views shared by West. She also believed the rapper's

male gaze In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heteros ...

of women conflicted with the album's underlying theme of equality, while failing to address allegations of abuse by Nas' ex-wife

Kelis Kelis Rogers-Mora (; born August 21, 1979), known mononymously as Kelis, is an American singer, songwriter and a professionally trained chef. At age 14, she was admitted to New York's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Perform ...

: "It's a deeply troubling conflict on an album that manages to be so successfully woke on one level and yet so blatantly archaic on another".

Alexis Petridis Alexis Petridis ( el, Αλέξης Πετρίδης; born 13 September 1971) is a British journalist, head rock and pop critic for the UK newspaper ''The Guardian'', as well as a regular contributor to the magazine '' GQ''. In addition to his mus ...

of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' praised West's production and Nas' tackling of social justice issues but also criticised Nas for not addressing domestic violence allegations, as well as for the "mercurial" nature of his lyrics stating " as'rhymes shifting from acute, powerful indictments of racism to stuff that makes no sense, or seems to be there purely for the purposes of provocation" and describing some of the themes as "

conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * * * * The term has a nega ...

". In a review for ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'', Paul Thompson described the album as "a frustrating listen, with glimpses of greatness". He wrote that "''Nasir'' is among the weakest Nas albums, but there’s nothing spectacular about its failure", describing it as "unfocused and unclear", however noted that "there are interesting flashes elsewhere on the album", praising "Everything" and "Adam and Eve", as well as describing "Cops Shot the Kid" as "cogent". Online hip hop publication ''

HipHopDX ''HipHopDX'' is an online magazine of hip hop music criticism and news. The website's current president and publisher is Sharath Cherian and the Head Of Content is Jerry L. Barrow. ''HipHopDX'' is the flagship publication of Cheri Media Group. ...

'' described the album as "imperfect fine art", concluding that "When you factor in all its dexterity, randomness and overall generality, it’s hard to truly believe ''Nasir'' was the album he had been cerebrally building these past six years."

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

gave the album a one-star honorable mention () in his capsule-review column for ''

Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character t ...

'', singling out "Cops Shot the Kid" and "Everything" as highlights while crediting Nas for "bringing the knowledge, mixing in the sophistry, and dropping a laugh line he knows the boss estcan't top: 'Everybody's saying my humility's infectious,' what a card". Later Nas couldn't really explain why the album didn't resonate with audiences and critics. "I don’t know what went wrong," Nas began. “I like "Cop Shot the Kid,' I like 'Adam and Eve. I like the music in 'Simple Things.' It’s a short album. We just didn’t get enough time. I wish we’d worked on it more.“

Commercial performance

''Nasir'' debuted at number five on the US ''Billboard'' 200 with 77,000

album-equivalent unit The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, is a measurement unit in music industry to define the consumption of music that equals the purchase of one album copy. This consumption includes streaming and song downloads in addition to traditio ...

s, of which 49,000 were pure album sales. It serves as Nas's twelfth top-ten album in the United States. The album dropped to the number 36 in its second week, earning an additional 14,000 album-equivalent units.

Track listing

*Credits are adapted from the CD version. Notes * signifies a co-producer * signifies an additional producer * "White Label" features uncredited vocals by Mano. Samples * "Not for Radio" contains samples of "Hymn to Red October (Main Title)" from ''

The Hunt for Red October ''The Hunt for Red October'' is the debut novel by American author Tom Clancy, first published on October 1, 1984, by the Naval Institute Press. It depicts Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius as he seemingly goes rogue with his country's cut ...

'', spoken by

Basil Poledouris Basil Konstantine Poledouris (; August 21, 1945 – November 8, 2006) was an American composer, conductor, and orchestrator of film and television scores, best known for his long-running collaborations with directors John Milius and Paul Verho ...

. * "Cops Shot the Kid" contains samples of "

Children's Story "Children's Story" is a song recorded by British-American hip hop artist Slick Rick. Taken as the second single from his album ''The Great Adventures of Slick Rick'', the song was a Top 5 hit on both the Hot R&B Singles and the Hot Rap Tracks ...

", performed by

Slick Rick Richard Martin Lloyd Walters (born January 14, 1965), better known as Slick Rick, is an English-American rapper and record producer. He rose to prominence with Doug E. Fresh & the Get Fresh Crew in the mid-1980s. Their songs " The Show" and " ...

, and dialogue from '' Wattstax'', spoken by

Richard Pryor Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style, and is widely regarded as on ...

. * "Bonjour" contains samples of "Dance Music" from ''

Mukti Mukti () is the concept of spiritual liberation ( Moksha or Nirvana) in Indian religions, including jivan mukti, para mukti. Mukti may also refer to: Film * ''Mukti'' (1937 film), a Hindi- and Bengali-language Indian film * ''Mukti'' (1960 ...

'', performed by R. D. Burman, and dialogue from '' Paid in Full'', spoken by

Dame Dash Damon Anthony Dash (born May 3, 1971) is an American entrepreneur and record executive. Dash is best known as co-founder of Roc-A-Fella along with Jay-Z and Kareem Burke. Early life Born in New York City, Dash swept the floors of a local barbe ...

. * "Everything" contains samples of "Space Time Girl", written by Adrian Owusu, Jake Ferguson and

Malcolm Catto Malcolm Catto is an English drummer and record producer. He is the co-founder and producer of the English psychedelic/jazz/experimental music group The Heliocentrics. They have so far released four of their own albums but have also issued colla ...

, as performed by

The Heliocentrics The Heliocentrics are an English, London-based musical collective that combines funk, jazz, psych, and library influences. The group is based around drummer and producer Malcolm Catto, bassist Jake Ferguson, guitarist Adrian Owusu, and multi-in ...

. * "Adam and Eve" contains samples of "Gole Yakh", performed by

Kourosh Yaghmaei Kourosh Yaghmaei ( fa, کورش یغمایی also spelled as Kourosh Yaghmaee; born 3 December 1946) is an Iranian singer-songwriter, composer and record producer, who started his career in the early 1970s. Regarded as one of the greatest Persian ...

, dialogue from '' The Godfather Part II'', spoken by

Al Pacino Alfredo James Pacino (; ; born April 25, 1940) is an American actor. Considered one of the most influential actors of the 20th century, he has received numerous accolades: including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy ...

. * "White Label" contains samples of "Prison Song", performed by

Shahram Shabpareh Shahram Shabpareh ( fa, شهرام شب‌پره) is an Iranian Pop singer and songwriter. Career He started his career as a drum player A drummer is a percussionist who creates music using drums. Most contemporary western bands that ...

Personnel

Musicians

* Phillip Peterson – cello, string arrangement * Victoria Parker – violin *

Plain Pat Patrick Reynolds, professionally known as Plain Pat, is an American music executive, record producer, songwriter and disc jockey (DJ). He is perhaps best known for overseeing American musicians Kanye West and Kid Cudi, during their respective e ...

– drums

Technical

* Zack Djurich – engineering * Sean Solymar – engineering * Juan "AyoJuan" Pena – engineering * Mike Malchicoff – engineering * Mike Dean – mixing * Jess Jackson – mixing * Andrew Dawson – mixing * BoogzDaBeast – programming * Ryan Hendrickson – engineering

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

External links

*
Nasir
' at

{{Authority control 2018 albums Albums produced by Benny Blanco Albums produced by Cashmere Cat Albums produced by Plain Pat Albums produced by Kanye West Albums produced by Mike Dean (record producer) Def Jam Recordings albums Nas albums Albums produced by Dot da Genius Mass Appeal Records albums