Merging goodwill spirit with a neo-soul vibe

Having broken through on 2006′s Moonlighting and reinforced their name on 2009′s Brooklynati, Tanya Morgan have hit that point in their still-evolving career where their biggest task is to simply maintain, especially now that they’re down to two MCs after a four-year lull. Even though it’d be easy for a group of their stay-posi caliber to coast off the easy goodwill they gained from emulating the brighter moments of circa ’93 Native Tongues rap, on Rubber Souls Tanya Morgan merge that spirit with a neo-soul vibe a decade ahead of their more direct lyrical influences. That live-band sound, provided by producer 6th Sense and a cast of sharp session players, switches things up ably — deep slow-ride bass murmurs and airy guitar strums on “The Day I,” mellow g-funk synth bounce on “Never Too Much,” funkadelic dark-alley foot-chase tension on “Pick It Up,” and snapping-tight snares throughout. Von Pea and Donwill’s softbatch-ducking earnestness radiates outwards in the service of romantic appeals (“All Em”) and hopes of leaving the next generation with the resources they didn’t grow up with themselves (“More”), lyrics that sound comfortable not only in their ease of mind but in how fluidly they ride.

It doesn't feel like 1995, but it still feels like Goodie Mob

Expectations are intrusive enough when you’re dealing with a reunion from a long-dissolved beloved musical act. With the new Goodie Mob album, Age Against the Machine, that reunion is coupled with a reinvention: 14 years separate this record and the pop-leaning World Party, the last album Goodie Mob made with all four members and something of a contentious stylistic departure in itself. Things get even cloudier if you factor in the styles that the core members have been indulging since — the dearth of straight-up rap on Cee-Lo’s solo and Gnarls Barkley work; the engagingly indie-weird side project Willie Isz that Khujo did with Jneiro Jarel. A return to the Dungeon Family-driven vital spot hit by first two albums Soul Food and Still Standing seems unlikely in this context — this isn’t a group that seems that interested in looking backward.

Instead, Age Against the Machine reintroduces their Dirty Southern sociopolitical edge over a string of beats that are just glossy enough to dupe the unwary into thinking it’s a crossover record. The production slate includes contributions by neo-funk oddball Jack Splash and executive production by Cee-Lo himself. But the only real underlying factor tying it all together is a sense of scale: blasts of fog-machine arena rock, spaceship-takeoff club-rap futurism, and manic chase-scene orchestration run through a record that conflates commercial potential with over-the-top bombast.

That’s the bait, at least, but the hook runs deep: The political message has scarcely been diluted, with cuts like “Power” and “Nexperience” cutting to the heart of racism’s omnipresence and “Kolors” ruminating over gang identity crises. Even the most upbeat cut, the retro-soul dance track “Amy,” joyfully celebrates a love affair with “my very first white girl.” Cee-Lo stands out in all his performances, but as a rapper with a sing-song cadence rather than a singer, and his theatrical tendencies helps make him sound righteously pissed and intelligently defiant as ever. T-Mo, Big Gipp, and Khujo put in strong enough work to keep this from turning into some kind of one-man show, though, and if this doesn’t feel like 1995, it still feels like Goodie Mob.

The soul-inflected singer goes all in with the most music-geek, history-minded of moves

After a solid showing with her 2012 debut album Banshee, soul-inflected singer Kendra Morris has gone all in with that most music-geek, history-minded of moves: a covers album. It’s a fitting if well-precedented turn for an up-and-coming performer looking to draw in more attention by showing how her own qualities can transform already familiar standards. Yet while there’s no doubting her formidable chops — think Adele if she angled for hook duty on the fuzzed-out psych-funk records of Adrian Younge — Mockingbird is an intriguing move for more reasons than just its status as a showcase for her satin-razor voice.

For one thing, her band has the Motown-’71 vibe down to a T, replete with luxurious strings, Coffey-colored fuzz guitar and a breakbeat-goldmine rhythm section. More significantly, Morris’s choice of songs is not just wide-ranging and knowledgeable but hell bent on finding the vintage soul undercurrents in just about anything. She’s savvy enough to put the Charmels’ Stax/Volt “C.R.E.A.M.” sample-source “As Long as I’ve Got You” through its smoky paces, or to fuse the Dionne Warwick and Isaac Hayes versions of “Walk on By.” She also conjures up the chitlin-circuit undercurrents of ’70s AOR&B favorites like the Stones’ “Miss You” and Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” But “Ride the Lightning” as a Thom Bell-style torch song? “Black Hole Sun” scrubbed clean of grunge and hung up as psychedelic shack decor? It’d be iconoclastic if it didn’t sound natural as breathing.

Toeing the line between underground rap and the traditions that scene built its base on

From the breaks that first propelled Kool Herc’s parties in ’73 to Dre’s minimoogs to Mystikal’s manic James Brown tics, funk has not only provided a foundational structure to hip-hop, it’s often risen to the surface and flat-out driven it. West Coast indie-rap vet Aceyalone has spent more than 20 years riding the outskirts of that territory, through his time with Freestyle Fellowship to his cult-classic solo debut All Balls Don’t Bounce to the later-career triumph of RJD2 teamup “A Beautiful Mine” (aka the Mad Men theme song). So after a long career — concurrent with a stab at making another excursion into grown-man rap — Leanin’ on Slick sees Aceyalone toeing that line between underground rap and the traditions that scene built its base on.

The title track draws off the J.B.’s sound more in a way befitting a ’70s indie-label garage-funk band (or a Daptonian revivalist group) than, say, the Bomb Squad, and the lyrical conceit isn’t the only throwback — Acey’s smooth-rolling delivery relays hustler tales from days when Caddies rolled long and low instead of high on 24s. That’s not the only nod to vintage soul: “I Can Get It Myself” cockily struts through the door that James Brown demanded be opened back in ’69, the handclaps and horn stabs of “What You Gone Do With That” is an old-school road-show with Acey’s own overdubbed echoes standing in for call-and-response vocalists, and the pairing of his steady-job grind motivation with a wailing Cee-Lo chorus makes “Workin’ Man’s Blues” the closest Aceyalone’s come to a genuine but uncompromised potential pop crossover. If the record vibe skews older, it’s by design — leadoff cut “30 and Up” practically decrees it — but if this is the album young Aceyalone figured he’d be making once he approached middle age, he had some right-thinking foresight.

Maintaining their futuristic-vintage outlook on music and philosophy

Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins have been making their spaced-out, meditative brand of astral soul so steadily — individually, together, in guest spots and as compilation curators — that they’re worth recognizing as important fixtures in the current Los Angeles beat scene. Like Erykah Badu with the cadence and resonance of Alice Coltrane’s harp, Muldrow’s got a voice that you can soak in — at which point it starts soaking in to you — and Perkins raps like a chilled-out, off-kilter West Coast version of Redman, connecting the dots between the screaming heads on the covers of Dare Iz a Darkside and Maggot Brain. Layer them over a sound that seems calibrated for rollerskate jams in the shadow of the pyramids, and it’s manna for abstract hip-hop heads and R&B fiends alike.

The Lighthouse, the latest in a fruitful series of collaborations by Muldrow and Perkins, maintains their futurist-vintage outlook on music and philosophy and the places where they intersect. With a title track that pairs righteous-anger calls-to-arms with a breathless, almost blissed-out excitement, The Lighthouse kills its own stress in real time. While the messaging is pretty straightforward — “Power” is your archetypal inner-strength-through-love anthem; “No More War” is self-explanatory — that directness is meant to give an evocative, empathetic clarity, not serve as a crutch propping up a lack of ideas. Even the simplest material has an up-front, get-down musicality that gives a next-level jolt of stargazing eccentricity to boogie funk and skyscraper soul.

The soundtrack to the best stoner-rap neo-noir never made

Grails members Alex Hall and Emil Amos struck beat-geek paydirt in 2012 with their self-titled debut as Lilacs & Champagne, a musty, scraped-up soak in sample-based psychedelia that played like the lost score to a 1972 Italo-American giallo set in a desert. To continue that cinematic analogy, Danish & Blue is the soundtrack to the best stoner-rap neo-noir never made. It’s the kind of album where RZA-eerie piano loops pair up with heatstruck AOR guitar riffs and decaying fragments of Gary Wright’s synthesizer, soaked in whiskey, and set on fire at 4 in the morning. If that reads like lightweight chillwave kitsch, it ain’t – the drums knock too hard to lull listeners into a reverie. Danish & Blue trades in its predecessor’s bristling spookiness for a mirror-shaded, marquee-lit haze wafting somewhere between sleaze and sophistication — dig the fusion-via-Schifrin bass growl of “Police Story” and the Thin Lizzy-assaults-Precinct 13 dirge of “Hamburgers and Tangerines” for the choicest highlights.

An elaborate, conceptual attempt at a fantastical origin story

Though his persona draws from comics, true crime and 42nd Street double features, it can still be pretty easy to see Ghostface Killah as simply a skilled amplification of an actual person. An actual person with of the most unmistakably intense voices and storytelling instincts known to hip-hop, sure, sure, but as much the man who grew up picking roaches out of the cereal box as he is the Wally Champ with the massive eagle gauntlet and Marvel-via-Shaw Brothers mythos. That’s why Twelve Reasons to Die, his collaboration with soundtrack composer and psychedelic-soul maestro Adrian Younge, is such a unique addition to his catalog: it’s an elaborate, conceptual attempt to give the Tony Starks-turned-Ghostface identity a fantastical origin story, set two years before his birth and drenched in a sound that uncannily evokes both Ghost’s fictional and real-life come-up years.

The plot’s over-the-top in the best way possible. Tony Starks, former enforcer for the DeLuca crime family, is set up and killed after going into business for himself in 1968. The method of execution becomes the means for revenge: he’s melted alive in boiling vinyl and his remains are pressed into a dozen LPs that, when played, resurrect him into Ghostface Killah and sets him on a path of bloody payback. The music-as-immortality metaphor’s both obvious and effective, especially in tandem with Younge’s compositions, which draw from many of the same inspirations the RZA used for his early production blueprint (Morricone, Stax, Hi Records), then faithfully but uniquely filters them through live-band instrumentation, complete with Younge’s own penchant for grimy organ riffs. Thanks to the unifying theme — and a no-bullshit focus that runs through power, love, betrayal, payback, and legend with his top-form panache — Ghost sounds more riveting than he has at any point since Fishscale, a presence that’s larger than afterlife.

Melting-pot eclecticism done right

Victor Axelrod can do it all, or at least everything he feels like doing. As a contributing member of Antibalas, the Dap-Kings, Menahan Street Band and Easy-Star All Stars, he has covered Afrobeat, Latin soul, Southern funk, dub reggae, and any genre he feels like adapting into that already-broad scope. But it’s under the roots-reggae identity Ticklah that he originally made his name, and Ticklah vs. Axelrod is a fine amalgamation of all the styles Axelrod’s got stashed under his hat. There’s some deep dub, naturally — the melodica-soaked “Answer Me” and its sparse, ghostly choir are straight from the Augustus Pablo playbook, and the soaring trombone and canyon-echo cymbals of “Descent” have all the resonance of Vin Gordon traversing through King Tubby’s vast sonic landscapes. But there are also some fitting integrations of dub-compatible sounds, from the sunny ’60s ska-meets-boogaloo vibe of “Mi Sonsito” to the soul-jazz-tinged “Deception.” And it benefits well from a slate of guests that includes sound bwoy-burying roots singer Mikey General and Native Tongues go-to hip-hop vocalist Vinia Mojica. Less a soundclash than a soundmeld, this is melting-pot eclecticism done right.

A fitting addition to the canon of a justly revered name in R&B

The original Delfonics lineup split up decades ago, but their legacy has lingered. The hip-hop generation saw to that, using Thom Bell’s velvety arrangements and the achingly sweet falsetto of lead singer William Hart to striking effect. Enter Adrian Younge, the Black Dynamite soundtrack mastermind who’s also collaborated with avowed Delfonics fanatic Ghostface Killah (Pretty Toney highlight “Holla” famously paid homage to “La-La – Means I Love You”). Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics is an unusual type of throwback: Younge’s muddy, lo-fi atmospherics recall low-budget early ’70s local-label 45s more than they do Bell’s vintage lushness. But the hallmarks of those classic albums’ instrumentation — burbling electric sitar, tinkling harps, chiming bells — are not only present but mix well with Younge’s characteristic elements of blown-out fuzz guitar and bone-chilling organ. And if Hart’s once-delicate falsetto has aged into something with a bit more bite to it, it cuts through the production’s intense haze vividly and harmonizes lushly with the young backup singers Saudia Mills and Loren Oden. With a slate of achingly heartfelt love songs — the blues-drenched garage-soul of “Lost Without You”; the haunting Om’Mas Keith collabration “Stop and Look”; the early ’60s vibe of “I Can’t Cry No More” — this is a fitting addition to the canon of a justly revered name in R&B.

Placid on the surface, with intricacies that emerge with patient listening

Six years after their first batch of trad-dubstep singles, four years after the skittering buzz of their breakthrough “Aidy’s Girl Is a Computer,” and three years after their synthpop-homaging debut full-length North, Darkstar just keep getting more delicate. Their sophomore album News from Nowhere is a tricky album to grasp — placid on the surface, but built to make its intricacies emerge with patient listening. Instrumentation leans heavy on airy, bright pianos and chimes, the basslines hover just as much as they throb, and vocalist James Buttery has an almost translucent quality to his voice that still sounds inhumanly frail no matter how many multitracks and effects it’s run through. The best moments on the album pair that sense of floaty fragility with an undercurrent of urgency, whether it’s emotional (the aching minimalism of the woozily lovestruck “Young Hearts”) or rhythmic (“Amplified Ease” and its clattering hoofbeat snares). In swapping out the melancholy of North for a more bucolic feeling, News from Nowhere is bound to take some getting used to for fans who were initially drawn in by Darkstar’s strikingly moody earlier work. But go in expecting a low-key sort of sunny euphoria and it’ll feel like an intriguing new facet to their style.

Making ambient minimalism that warmly swoons into propulsive rhythmic shape

Jason Chung is among the lower-profile producers to emerge from Los Angeles’s late-’00s abstract beat scene, but that doesn’t make him invisible. His production work as Nosaj Thing — including his 2009 breakout debut Drift — suggests a lot by doing a little, making ambient minimalism that warmly swoons its way into propulsive rhythmic shape. Home takes that austerity one step further: Beats are built off shuffling clicks, chords float like jellyfish, and bass is more nudged than dropped. The entry-level reference points gravitate towards Boards of Canada a la The Campfire Headphase and Aphex Twin’s ambient works, small doses of hypnotic and meditative melody that glow a little too brightly to feel strictly mechanical. But cuts like the title track and “Distance” are tumultuous and intimate enough to suggest kinship with some off contemporary R&B’s more introspective corners. And with two indie-world guest spots — Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino hauntingly bobbing in the waves of “Eclipse/Blue,” and the distant, wistful Toro y Moi feature “Try” — Chung proves to be a fantastic collaborator capable of drawing out the eeriest qualities in a singer.

Aiming further into the territory of minimal and tech house

Anyone going into FaltyDL’s new album Hardcourage expecting a continuation of the old-school dubstep and UK-garage inflections of You Stand Uncertain could be in for a shock. In less than two years since he released that previous album, Drew Lustman has pared down the elaborate drum programming and aimed an already airy sound even further into the territory of minimal and tech house. That doesn’t make it any less malleable, however: There’s still plenty of space for elaborate melodies and percussive interplay. The album breaks out of usual genre lines here and there: “Stay I’m Changed” is a Factory-direct synthpop meditation, while the clanky swing of “Re Assimilate” calls up memories of German techno’s schaffel moment. But Hardcourage is at its best when it lets the 4/4 pulse run free, like it does through the glitchy soul vocal-driven “Straight & Arrow” or the bucolically high-strung closer “Bells.”

Veterans presenting themselves with unaffected authority

With The Solution, Black Moon/Boot Camp Clik powerhouse Buckshot has made 9th Wonder his second-most frequent production partner after Da Beatminerz: This is their third effort together, after The Chemistry and The Formula. Buckshot sounds characteristically rugged over a rotation of beats that range from guitar-inflected triumph (“The Big Bang”) to ruminative, haunted soul (“The Feeling”). By now, they’ve settled comfortably into a groove, veterans presenting themselves with unaffected authority.

Not that they don’t acknowledge the harsh reality of the game as it stands for vets these days: The gripping “Shorty Left” features Buckshot as the frustrated artist trying to maintain his underground integrity and Rapsody as the wife who’s wondering how that’ll help the family eat. And the premise of “Stop Rapping” is a pragmatic take on the classic step-up-your-rap-game challenge to pretenders: If someone years deep has to bust his ass for every ounce of hard-found success (“I’ve been at it for five joints/ And I still ain’t make a profit or pocket one point”), what hope is there for second-rate entry-level MCs who expect instant success? But a grind like that leaves no room for middle-age complacency, and The Solution knocks down everybody’s reps but their own.

His fourth and best solo record

P.O.S.’s career has involved so many collaborations and side projects that, by now, even his solo records feel like collective efforts that tap into the resources of a trusted group. His status as a member of indie-rap braintrust Doomtree, slow-jam supergroup Gayngs and noise cabal Marijuana Deathsquads haven’t just provided him with different stylistic guises and cohorts to bounce ideas off – as you can hear on We Don’t Even Live Here, it’s given him an artistic community to fight for and represent. If there’s one thread that runs through We Don’t Even Live Here, his fourth and best solo record, it’s the idea that this kind of solidarity is a good excuse to get some real pushback.

There’s no shortage of the charismatic punk-rap firebrand talk that’s illuminated his work for years. But whether he’s trashing your flashy possessions (“Fuck Your Stuff”) or taking over entire city blocks (“Arrow to the Action/Fire in the Hole”), he does it on behalf of a “we” that draws in an implied “you.” Lines like “we can take all that pressure, ’cause we don’t want nothin’ at all/except for maybe some more of us” (“Lockpicks, Knives, Bricks and Bats”) are delivered with the kind of measured calculation that makes him sound like he’s plotting the best way to make you useful in his fight – or the quickest route to shove you out of the way if you aren’t. The subtle sonic shift from Never Better‘s moshpit to Live Here‘s dance floor clicks, too, thanks to producer/mixing engineer (and former high school classmate) Andrew Dawson, whose experience behind the boards on a grip of Kanye records rubs off on this record’s anthemic sheen while making sure to keep it grimy enough to cause a fire hazard.

Underground Cali rap destiny falling into place

There’s 10 years, a couple hundred miles and not much else that separates L.A. underground vet Murs and Fresno phenom Fashawn. Both MCs specialize in a West Coast indie-rap classicism that prizes personality first and scene-setting lyricism a close second. And that makes This Generation one of those super-duo team-ups that winds up feeling like less of a crossover blockbuster and more like an inevitable pairing of like-minded compatriots. It’s strongest when they’re swapping verses directly – the candid point-of-pride sessions “Yellow Tape” and “Slash Gordon” make their back-and-forth mid-line mic trades sound like they’re finishing each others’ thoughts. But it also benefits from getting two distinct angles on the same scenarios – drawing lines back to crack-era Reagan youth from the teenagers of the Bush years on the title cut, or making the titular vehicle of “64 Impala” an aspiration for Fashawn’s third-person restless, doomed criminal and a prize possession of Murs’s first-person success story. Back it all up with a slow-rolling live band funk engineered by Beatnick & K-Salaam, and you’ve got an album that sounds like underground Cali rap destiny falling into place.

Reigniting the eloquent-everyman appeal of their much-loved debut

Within four years of its initial 2007 release, Blu’s Below the Heavens went from promising breakthrough to cult classic to a reminder of what could’ve been – one of those epochal MC/producer pairings that seemed destined to go unfollowed. When the always-prolific rapper Blu posted his sophomore team-up with producer Exile on his Bandcamp page during an already-busy 2011, it almost felt like a tossed-off afterthought – a potentially rock-solid effort sabotaged by half-hearted promotion and a cruddy, unmastered mixing job. But less than a year later, a reworked, remastered version of Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them has emerged for official release, and in its final form it reignites the eloquent-everyman appeal of the pair’s much-loved debut. Exile’s golden-age sensibilities lean heavily on psychedelic soul, sinewy dub reggae, and off-kilter bebop, refined beats that gleam at low volumes and rumble authoritatively when cranked. And Blu’s low-key mic presence is introspective and extroverted all at once, unspooling lines that evoke vintage Pharcyde in style and ambitious adolescent hang-out sessions or family reunions in spirit. It’s the second chance this album – and this partnership – absolutely deserve.

It doesn't feel like 1995, but it still feels like Goodie Mob

Expectations are intrusive enough when you’re dealing with a reunion from a long-dissolved beloved musical act. With the new Goodie Mob album, Age Against the Machine, that reunion is coupled with a reinvention: 14 years separate this record and the pop-leaning World Party, the last album Goodie Mob made with all four members and something of a contentious stylistic departure in itself. Things get even cloudier if you factor in the styles that the core members have been indulging since — the dearth of straight-up rap on Cee-Lo’s solo and Gnarls Barkley work; the engagingly indie-weird side project Willie Isz that Khujo did with Jneiro Jarel. A return to the Dungeon Family-driven vital spot hit by first two albums Soul Food and Still Standing seems unlikely in this context — this isn’t a group that seems that interested in looking backward.

Instead, Age Against the Machine reintroduces their Dirty Southern sociopolitical edge over a string of beats that are just glossy enough to dupe the unwary into thinking it’s a crossover record. The production slate includes contributions by neo-funk oddball Jack Splash and executive production by Cee-Lo himself. But the only real underlying factor tying it all together is a sense of scale: blasts of fog-machine arena rock, spaceship-takeoff club-rap futurism, and manic chase-scene orchestration run through a record that conflates commercial potential with over-the-top bombast.

That’s the bait, at least, but the hook runs deep: The political message has scarcely been diluted, with cuts like “Power” and “Nexperience” cutting to the heart of racism’s omnipresence and “Kolors” ruminating over gang identity crises. Even the most upbeat cut, the retro-soul dance track “Amy,” joyfully celebrates a love affair with “my very first white girl.” Cee-Lo stands out in all his performances, but as a rapper with a sing-song cadence rather than a singer, and his theatrical tendencies helps make him sound righteously pissed and intelligently defiant as ever. T-Mo, Big Gipp, and Khujo put in strong enough work to keep this from turning into some kind of one-man show, though, and if this doesn’t feel like 1995, it still feels like Goodie Mob.

A must-have Rappers Killing It In 2012 showcase

It was just a matter of time before the Alchemist followed the lead of his Gangrene partner Oh No (Dr. No’s Oxperiment, Dr. No’s Ethiopium) and concocted his own rapid-fire collection of beats sourced from obscure international origin. In the case of Russian Roulette, he spins some inspired psychedelic headknock out of Soviet-era Russian jazz and fusion, all tied together in a fast-paced continuous mix where cinematic dialogue clips mesh with 16-bar hit-and-run verses and no tracks even approach the three-minute mark. Everyone involved makes a quick and memorable impact under those constraints: The beats hit that sweet spot between proggy, fuzzed-out obscurantism and nod-your-head immediacy, while highlight-reel appearances from mainstays Action Bronson (diabolical gourmet player’s anthem “Decisions Over Veal Orloff”), Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire (femmes fatale sci-fi-pulp story “The Explanation”), Danny Brown and ScHoolboy Q (teaming up to napalm everything in their path on “Fight Confirmation”) make it a must-have Rappers Killing It In 2012 showcase.

A mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight

Nas’s career path has been a strange, contradictory one: It’s clear that he’s a legend, but he’s always being pressured to live up to it, as though Illmatic was his own personal Citizen Kane. The last time he reasserted his status back in 2001, it was thanks to a feud with Jay-Z that lit a fire under his ass. But after a series of increasingly uneven late-career albums, Nas has found another route back to form, embracing the idea that maybe his position is already secure and he doesn’t have anything left to prove. But don’t mistake this attitude for complacency: Life is Good, his 11th studio album, is steeped in reflection, a mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight.

The first four tracks are the kind of intricately constructed, human-level crime narratives Nas has always excelled at — statements of influence (“No Introduction”; “Loco-Motive”), tense come-up/fall-down scenarios (“A Queens Story”), payback gone tragically wrong (“Accident Murderers”) — but tinged with the bittersweet undertone of not having enough peers who made it big alongside him. The last three — the ruminative, frustrated “Stay”, the romantic-daydream “Cherry Wine” and the Kelis breakup wrap-up “Bye Baby” — reveal that he’s just as adept talking about the aspirations and frustrations of love. And in between there’s Nas figuring out how to be a model father (“Daughters”), reconciling his hood roots and his jet-set present (“Reach Out”), invoking his origins to dress down pretenders (“Back When”), and doing the memory of Heavy D proud with his hardest got-mine anthem since “Made You Look” (“The Don”). The production fits the legacy-minded tone — no brostep or Guetta, no attempts at exhuming an ossified ’94, just a slate of good-to-excellent beats from names that’ve always suited him well (Salaam Remi, No I.D., Buckwild) and A-list R&B hooks (Mary J. Blige, Anthony Hamilton, Amy Winehouse). In a hip-hop era where the most pivotal icons are dealing with the idea of becoming elder statesmen, Life Is Good is the kind of album an Illmatic acolyte would hope a pushing-40 Nas could make.

A mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight

Nas’s career path has been a strange, contradictory one: It’s clear that he’s a legend, but he’s always being pressured to live up to it, as though Illmatic was his own personal Citizen Kane. The last time he reasserted his status back in 2001, it was thanks to a feud with Jay-Z that lit a fire under his ass. But after a series of increasingly uneven late-career albums, Nas has found another route back to form, embracing the idea that maybe his position is already secure and he doesn’t have anything left to prove. But don’t mistake this attitude for complacency: Life is Good, his 11th studio album, is steeped in reflection, a mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight.

The first four tracks are the kind of intricately constructed, human-level crime narratives Nas has always excelled at — statements of influence (“No Introduction”; “Loco-Motive”), tense come-up/fall-down scenarios (“A Queens Story”), payback gone tragically wrong (“Accident Murderers”) — but tinged with the bittersweet undertone of not having enough peers who made it big alongside him. The last three — the ruminative, frustrated “Stay”, the romantic-daydream “Cherry Wine” and the Kelis breakup wrap-up “Bye Baby” — reveal that he’s just as adept talking about the aspirations and frustrations of love. And in between there’s Nas figuring out how to be a model father (“Daughters”), reconciling his hood roots and his jet-set present (“Reach Out”), invoking his origins to dress down pretenders (“Back When”), and doing the memory of Heavy D proud with his hardest got-mine anthem since “Made You Look” (“The Don”). The production fits the legacy-minded tone — no brostep or Guetta, no attempts at exhuming an ossified ’94, just a slate of good-to-excellent beats from names that’ve always suited him well (Salaam Remi, No I.D., Buckwild) and A-list R&B hooks (Mary J. Blige, Anthony Hamilton, Amy Winehouse). In a hip-hop era where the most pivotal icons are dealing with the idea of becoming elder statesmen, Life Is Good is the kind of album an Illmatic acolyte would hope a pushing-40 Nas could make.

A mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight

Nas’s career path has been a strange, contradictory one: It’s clear that he’s a legend, but he’s always being pressured to live up to it, as though Illmatic was his own personal Citizen Kane. The last time he reasserted his status back in 2001, it was thanks to a feud with Jay-Z that lit a fire under his ass. But after a series of increasingly uneven late-career albums, Nas has found another route back to form, embracing the idea that maybe his position is already secure and he doesn’t have anything left to prove. But don’t mistake this attitude for complacency: Life is Good, his 11th studio album, is steeped in reflection, a mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight.

The first four tracks are the kind of intricately constructed, human-level crime narratives Nas has always excelled at — statements of influence (“No Introduction”; “Loco-Motive”), tense come-up/fall-down scenarios (“A Queens Story”), payback gone tragically wrong (“Accident Murderers”) — but tinged with the bittersweet undertone of not having enough peers who made it big alongside him. The last three — the ruminative, frustrated “Stay”, the romantic-daydream “Cherry Wine” and the Kelis breakup wrap-up “Bye Baby” — reveal that he’s just as adept talking about the aspirations and frustrations of love. And in between there’s Nas figuring out how to be a model father (“Daughters”), reconciling his hood roots and his jet-set present (“Reach Out”), invoking his origins to dress down pretenders (“Back When”), and doing the memory of Heavy D proud with his hardest got-mine anthem since “Made You Look” (“The Don”). The production fits the legacy-minded tone — no brostep or Guetta, no attempts at exhuming an ossified ’94, just a slate of good-to-excellent beats from names that’ve always suited him well (Salaam Remi, No I.D., Buckwild) and A-list R&B hooks (Mary J. Blige, Anthony Hamilton, Amy Winehouse). In a hip-hop era where the most pivotal icons are dealing with the idea of becoming elder statesmen, Life Is Good is the kind of album an Illmatic acolyte would hope a pushing-40 Nas could make.

A mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight

Nas’s career path has been a strange, contradictory one: It’s clear that he’s a legend, but he’s always being pressured to live up to it, as though Illmatic was his own personal Citizen Kane. The last time he reasserted his status back in 2001, it was thanks to a feud with Jay-Z that lit a fire under his ass. But after a series of increasingly uneven late-career albums, Nas has found another route back to form, embracing the idea that maybe his position is already secure and he doesn’t have anything left to prove. But don’t mistake this attitude for complacency: Life is Good, his 11th studio album, is steeped in reflection, a mixture of gratitude and regret, retrospect and foresight.

The first four tracks are the kind of intricately constructed, human-level crime narratives Nas has always excelled at — statements of influence (“No Introduction”; “Loco-Motive”), tense come-up/fall-down scenarios (“A Queens Story”), payback gone tragically wrong (“Accident Murderers”) — but tinged with the bittersweet undertone of not having enough peers who made it big alongside him. The last three — the ruminative, frustrated “Stay”, the romantic-daydream “Cherry Wine” and the Kelis breakup wrap-up “Bye Baby” — reveal that he’s just as adept talking about the aspirations and frustrations of love. And in between there’s Nas figuring out how to be a model father (“Daughters”), reconciling his hood roots and his jet-set present (“Reach Out”), invoking his origins to dress down pretenders (“Back When”), and doing the memory of Heavy D proud with his hardest got-mine anthem since “Made You Look” (“The Don”). The production fits the legacy-minded tone — no brostep or Guetta, no attempts at exhuming an ossified ’94, just a slate of good-to-excellent beats from names that’ve always suited him well (Salaam Remi, No I.D., Buckwild) and A-list R&B hooks (Mary J. Blige, Anthony Hamilton, Amy Winehouse). In a hip-hop era where the most pivotal icons are dealing with the idea of becoming elder statesmen, Life Is Good is the kind of album an Illmatic acolyte would hope a pushing-40 Nas could make.