Underhated : Pretty much any Nas album made since the year 2000

Okay, Stillmatic isn’t a bad album (though Ether will always be the most overrated dis track in the history of rap : a string of jokes and puns about poofs which Jim Davidson would’ve rejected for being too obvious over a beat which sounds like one of the filler tracks from McGruff’s 1998 album) with the excellent opening combo of Stillmatic Intro and You’re Da Man and The Lost Tapes is worth owning for No Ideas Original alone so we’ll grant those 2 a pass into the hallowed halls of our record collection but the rest of Nasir’s catalogue since the turn of the milennium?

If you’ve got Made You Look, Get Down, I Can, Thief’s Theme and Virgo on 12″ then you don’t need to own God’s Son and Street’s Disciple; Just typing the word Nastradamus sends shivers up our spine and into the drums of our ears so we don’t want to even spend a milisecond reconsidering that steaming pile of confused shite, and Hip Hop Is Dead and Untitled are two of the most appalling examples of muddled gimmicky masquerading as concept albums in any genre of music, the sound of a man who completely ran out of ideas 4 or 5 years ago over beats so lumpen that they’re capable of inducing lead poisoning in listeners.

Nas – Thugz Mansion

And Thugz Mansion (NY) may just be the worst rap song ever made.

Underrated : AZ – A.W.O.L

Blighted throughout the first ten years of his career by albums which ranged from patchy to downright atrocious, AZ finally came good after the debacle of his would-be swan song album Final Call getting leaked to the internet and ripped apart in reviews at least 6 months before its scheduled release date by dropping the hastily recorded but excellent A.W.O.L album in its place a year later in 2005.

As a rapper who’s always lived and died on his beat selection, AZ’s scramble to put an album out resulted in him enlisting some dependable help : Primo hooked up a banger in The Come-Up; the then ever-dependable Heatmakerz cooked up a couple of sure-shots including Never Change; Emile provided a simple but effective looping of Gangbusters from the Wild Style soundtrack for AZ, Raekwon and Ghostface to deliver a hometown anthem; Lil’ Fame jacked Top Billin’ and rejigged it into a modern NY stomper; the late Disco D submitted the lush City Of God; and relatively unknown up-and-comers Frado and MoSS came with heat on Can’t Stop and Envious, respectively.

Naturally, it’s not without its problems : Slick Rick disappeared from the song Bedtime Story even though official Koch press releases had him listed as appearing on it, there’s a couple of utter duds and  Serious with Nas didn’t make the final tracklisting thus making it one of the best officially unreleased tracks this decade, but the inclusion of the 3 best tracks from the aborted Final Call album taped on into a 9 minute mix at the conclusion of the album make up for these minor niggles and, all things considered, A.W.O.L stands up as one of the better albums the east coast has offered up during the last 5 years. Even Robbie Unkut quite liked this one and he usually doesn’t like anything made after 1997 which doesn’t feature Tragedy Khadafi, various members of Money Boss Players and a sample of Nautilus.

AZ – Never Change