Rap Kumite 2
Nas vs. Jay-Z. Rap Kumite 2.
By Nick M. W.
I took my 20 favorite rappers and put them in head-to-head matchups to battle for their rank in Rap Kumite.
Queensbridge and Marcy Projects go to war for NYC’s crown.
Step into a New York state of mind for the penultimate Rap Kumite, where hustlers “get G-packs off quick” and “make short term goals when the weather folds”. Nas and Jay-Z have been the figureheads of Big Apple rap music for damn near 30 years. They have far exceeded their Golden Era peers in both critical and commercial success by doing exactly what they told you they were going to do on their early records: get theirs. These two titans of rap never went away although Nas’s rap career fizzled for a minute in the 00s. With a true hustler’s spirit, Nas didn’t pack it up. Instead, he declared “Hip-Hop Is Dead” and then proceeded to go on a late career run that finally earned him a long-deserved Grammy, reminding fans of rap music that he still has some gas in the tank; he’s still got that N.Y. state of mind, even if 25 plus years in the game has matured his perspective. Jay-Z never faded from the spotlight. Marrying Beyonce ensured that wouldn’t happen, but was around that same time Nas’s star lost some of its shine, Jay’s popularity skyrocketed thanks to a couple of career-making albums (The Blueprint and The Black Album). He’d already dropped a couple of undisputed classics (Reasonable Doubt and Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life), putting his name in the discussion around “best rappers in the game”.. As hip-hop moves into its fifth decade, Hova is, arguably, more relevant now than he was back in the late 90s.
Jay-Z is a billionaire business, man. He’s married to one of the most famous singers on the planet, and he’s one of the decorated rappers ever, earning a couple dozen Grammy’s, if that type of shit matters to you. Nas, with far fewer accolades, managed to grab hip-hop by its throat with his debut, Illmatic, and rode the critical acclaim of that album for his entire career, for better or worse. It’s considered by many fans of rap to be one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever, preceding the debuts of Jay-Z and his fellow Brooklyn rapper, Biggie Smalls. Nas has also become a savvy investor, earning more from his financial ventures than his record sales. But this here isn’t a dick-measuring contest. No one gives a shit about how much these rappers are worth or who did it first. This is Rap Kumite, and it’s about who did it the best.
Nas. Photo from NME.com (2021).
Nas
“We was chillin’ on these benches/ Where he pumped loose cracks/ I took the L when he passed it, this little bastard/ Keeps me blasted and starts talkin’ mad shit/ I had to school him, told him don’t let niggas fool him/ ‘Cause when the pistol blows/ The one that’s murdered be the cool one.”
Illmatic is one of the most important hip-hop albums ever made. It impacted the culture the same way that Straight Outta Compton hit. Both albums marked significant moments in hip-hop, shifts in sound, lyrical content and style. Few artists do that to an entire industry. N.W.A. were the harbingers of gangsta rap; Nas sparked the East Coast Renaissance with Illmatic. His debut is cinema for your ears. Nas spends the entire album rapping about the despair and violence he watched unfold around him in Queensbridge with the wisdom of an OG who’s had years of experience on the streets, except Nas was in his late teens when he put it all together. Illmatic was a classic when it dropped. It put the industry on notice and announced the arrival of one of rap’s all-time greats.
The follow up albums...well, it’s a tricky thing to have to meet expectations versus set them. Illmatic set the bar high. At the time of its release, the question was, “is this Nas’s floor or his ceiling?” Subsequent work suggests that maybe we heard peak Nas between 1994 and 1996. It Was Written didn’t get the same critical praise that Illmatic received, taking Nas’s sound in a different direction; he wanted to expand beyond the hardcore, street sound on his debut. He wanted commercial success. The trade off, so it seemed for many years for Nas, was a decline in quality in overall production on his tracks. Somehow, the rapper with a keen eye for observation and a unique talent to present what he’s observed in a rhyming narrative managed to sound generic.
It Was Written was a commercial success. “Nasty Nas” flipped his style and created a new character for his fans, “Esco” the Mafia don. This is blasphemous to say, but I like It Was Written more than Illmatic. Nas’s rhymes are still sharp even though the lyrical content shifted towards objectifying women, glamorizing crime, and highlighting the paper chase. Mafioso rap was the East Coast counteroffensive to West Coast Gangsta rap. It was Scorsese on a hip-hop record. Nas was a natural fit for this character, but things didn’t continue to expand in the right direction for Nas’s career. As hip-hop moved into the 21st century, it seemed like Nas was still riding the Illmatic wave, and fans were waiting to catch the second-coming of his debut.
That never happened. Nas didn’t record another universally beloved “hot” album for almost two decades. I Am... was disappointing, and that probably has more to do with the leaking of that album onto the Internet back when something like that would torpedo records sales. Nas tried to pivot from that and went back into the booth in an eleventh-hour move that did more damage to the project than it did to save it. Nastradamus sucked. Stillmatic was dope and is easily the best work Nas put out in the new millennium until (arguably) his most recent King’s Disease efforts. Still, though, the handful of projects Nas has put out between Stillmatic and King’s Disease II offered plenty of morsels that conjured the spirit of the rapper fans fell in love with back in the early 90s. On God’s Son, he gave us “Get Down” and “Made You Look”, two of his best tracks. He’s never hit the same stratospheric heights as his only contemporary from the era, the man he’s battling here, Jay-Z, but it’s not (always) the result of Nas’s lack of skills as much as it’s been his odd choices in production.
All that aside, Nas is one of the most gifted rappers in the game—past, present, and future. He’s still making relevant music and has gone toe-to-toe with the best, as evidenced by his evisceration of Jay-Z on “Ether”; he’s had hit songs, like “If I Ruled The World”; he’s widely considered to be the best MCs to ever do it. Even with the missteps in his career, Nas is better than 98% of the rappers that have ever lived.
Favorite Track
“Taken In Blood” is the best example of Nas rabid on the mic, spitting like he’s possessed by the spirit of hip-hop Tony Montana. He’s rapping for his life on that track. “Made You Look” is as close to an anthem that Nas ever got. It’s not a celebration of anything other than his greatness on the mic. “One Love” is a standout narrative rap on an album full of mind-blowing raps that tell stories as vivid as an episode of The Wire. On this track, Nas is reading letters he wrote to his boy who is in prison. He’s just catching up his dude on what’s been going down since he went in, but it’s a master class in writing verse like vignettes.
Jay-Z. Photo by Jay Mohegan for NPR.org (2010).
Jay-Z
“Ayo, peep the style and the way the cops sweat us/ The number one question is can the feds get us/ I got vendettas in dice games against ass bettors/ And niggas who pump wheels and drive Jettas.”
Leading up to the 1992 NBA Finals between the Chicago Bulls and the Portland Trailblazers, there was a back-and-forth going on among fans regarding whether or not Clyde Drexler would be able to handle MJ. Some folks, no doubt mostly Blazers fans, put it into existence that “Clyde the Glide” would actually give Jordan more than he could handle—that there was actually a chance that he was better than MJ. It took one game in that series for those theories to fall apart. It took a little longer than one game, or in this case one album, for Jay-Z to assume the title as the best MC in rap music. It took the tragic murder of the Notorious B.I.G. to open the door for Jay-Z’s uncontested run; it took Nas’s own artistic undoing, sinking some of his own projects under the weight of sloppy, rushed production and less-than-inspiring raps; it took The Blueprint. For some, this is Jay-Z’s crowning achievement, six albums deep into his career, another eight albums following that one. It took some time, but Jay-Z has earned all of the praise and accolades. What hasn’t he done?
Hova’s rap career is one of the greatest for a rapper and among the best for a solo artist in contemporary music history. He’s had over 100 of his songs (or songs he was featured on) land in Billboard’s top 100. He has 24 Grammy wins out of 83 nominations. He’s collaborated with some of the best acts and artists to hit the stage. He has anthems and rap ballads and hardcore street bangers. He’s got “Big Pimpin’” and “Money Ain’t A Thang” and “Can’t Knock The Hustle” and “Renegade” and “The Story of O.J.”. Club bangers tailor made for radio play? Check. Gangster shit for when you’re feeling of the mood? Check. Songs for the ladies. Songs for the fellas. 30 million+ monthly Spotify streams. Worth a billion dollars. He’s the G.O.A.T. in so many ways. He’s hip-hop’s Jordan, but unlike Mike, Hova has no imitators. There’s no Kobe Bryant playing in his shadow, no LeBron James looming over his legacy. There have been and continued to be incredible MCs in the same environment as Jay-Z, but he’s remained a level above them.
26 years in, Jigga’s career has been defined by platinum plaques and universal respect for his hustle. For these last two and a half decades, it’s been impossible to speak about hip-hop and rap music and not bring up Jay-Z’s name. He’s synonymous with the culture.
Favorite Track
When I put these playlists together for Rap Kumite battles, I start off by adding all the songs I like from the two artists that I can think of right off the top of my head. Then, I shave the playlist down to 20 tracks, 10 from each contestant. With Jay-Z, I encountered a unique problem with this methodology. I had around 30 Jay-Z tracks on the playlist before I took the deep dive into his catalog to see if I missed any songs I like. From there, I had to make cuts harder than a coach telling the undrafted rookie with all the heart that he’s just not good enough for the squad. Check the playlist. Where’s “Big Pimpin’” or “The Ruler’s Back” or “Feelin’ It” or “Hard Knock Life” or “Lucifer” or “So Ghetto” or “1-900-HUSTLER”? That’s not even counting anything on Watch The Throne because that’s a collab album.
You get what I’m saying? Jay-Z has a ton of hits—proper bangers that will put your neck in your lap. Dozens of them, from 1996 until now. Add all the features he’s had, and you can add a couple dozen more to that list. None of them, though, are quite as hot as “Brooklyn’s Finest”, like rounds bursting out of a TEC. Two of the best MCs to ever kick a rap are passing the mic back and forth on a [name] beat that keeps the pace sizzling. Jigga has a deep catalog of hits, but there are none finer than this one.
There can only be ONE!
This is Rap Kumite 2, reserved for the 2nd spot in my “Top 10”. Styles matter in fighting and in hip-hop, and legacy matters, too. Nas hit the scene with a masterpiece, cementing his legacy as an all-time rhymer with visionary skills on the mic. Jay-Z is the all-time rhymer, paced in accolades and sales only by one Eminem. Given the overall weight of his career, with the gravitational mass of a planet, it’s impossible to beat the real “God MC”.
Jay-Z
Congratulations! The prize is a special place in my heart.
Hova. He’s the supreme ruler of rap and likely will be deep into his AARP years. His career will stand as the benchmark for greatness. He’ll go down in history as the best to ever do it.
So why isn’t he your #1?
Find out in next week’s series finale.
RAP KUMITE
10. Evidence
09. GZA
08. Pusha-T
07. DMX
06. Nipsey Hussle
05. Kendrick Lamar
04. Raekwon
03. Method Man
02. Jay-Z
In the final Rap Kumite, an extraterrestrial from ATL takes on Brooklyn’s finest.
Previously in Rap Kumite 3...
