But there’s an emptiness to these provocations. On the surface, lines like “Fox News was started by a black dude” (it wasn’t) and “Edgar Hoover was black” (he wasn’t) are standard Nas soapboxing messianic titles aside, Nas has very rarely claimed to be anything other than one guy trying to move the masses by sharing what he believes. Weaving together outsized paranoia (“They try to Hyman Roth me/John Fitzgerald me”), textbook hotepisms (“Black Kemet gods, Black Egyptian gods/Summoned from heaven, blessed, dressed in only Goyard”), and boilerplate faux-deep commentary (“Shoot the ballot box, no voter cards, they are all frauds”), he builds to a doofy litany of falsehoods and unsolicited history lessons. A sped-up loop of the main theme of The Hunt for Red October gives “Not for Radio” some cinematic and regal flair, but Nas lumbers through his verses. “Escobar season begins,” he says flatly, quickly passing the mic to Diddy, whose raucous presence, by contrast, is immediately felt. He opens the album with the perfunctory enthusiasm of a waiter describing the daily special to her 30th table that night.
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