Queensbridge hip-hop legend Nasir “Nas” Jones continues his run of late-career rejuvenation with yet another collaborative solo rap album titled Magic 2. The sequel to 2021’s critically acclaimed Magic comes as the fifth studio conceived by him and delivered by record producer Chauncey “Hit-Boy” Hollis, who himself is doing sonic somersaults behind the producer’s desk. And five works deep, including the Grammy-winning King’s Disease series, Nas is charting new lyrical territories, and Hit-Boy’s youthful swag keeps him from aging unpleasantly as most of his peers already have this late in their lanes.
Nas’s seventeenth LP straddles between being a words-dominated album and an eardrum-pleasing release. That is to say that its nostalgic lyricism is inherited from its 2021 ancestor Magic, which is also reminiscent but not cloyingly backwards-looking. However, the production work is forward-thinking and modern, incorporating elements such as, bass-heavy drums, rustic piano loops, and back-tingling samples.
Much like the first one, it sees Nas plumb themes of the past and the existence of Black people as being nothing but a product of something beyond worldly forces as the album’s name already suggests. “What This All Really Mean” includes themes of the value of staying true to oneself, past successes that have set him up for greater heights, and a Nipsey Hussle reference woven into the hurt he felt from the infamous bootlegging of I Am… (1999). “Black Magic” and “Abracadabra” see the Illmatic legend explore the discourse of Black existence from a supernatural standpoint, a mild throwback of what he did with “Ultra Black” back in 2020. But then again, Nas has always been sentimental about the beauty of Blackness. At the heart of it all, Magic 2 is yet another trip down memory lane, but he does it with a newer perspective that gives the album a sheen that can’t be found in another one of his older projects.
One appreciable difference that sets the era of the self-proclaimed New Gang Starr apart from the previous ones is how Nas no longer takes himself too seriously. Nasir (2018), Life is Good (2012), Untitled (2008), three albums that came before the Hit-Boy period showcase the wordsmith at something of a creative plateau. In the past three years with Hit-Boy, he’s been allowing himself the liberty of letting loose as seen in “27 Summers”, “YKTV”, and “Get Light”. On Magic 2, he does the same thing on “Earvin Magic Johnson”, flexing his prowess over a thumping trap beat.
Magic 2 might not be the most effortless release of the King’s Disease era, but then again, the standard set is already quite high for someone already on his “third prime”, according to the man himself. With the sixth Nas-Hit album already on the way (“By the time y’all hear this, we be halfway through the next one”), It’s evident that the pair have hit an alchemic streak that either maintains its shape or improves with time.
Listen here:
