SOME MUSIC IS BETTER WITH iTUNES: nas - stillmatic

when stillmatic came out it was immediately hailed as a classic. the source give it five mics. if i could sum up my reaction to hearing ether for the first time, i guess i'd say it was like gripping a firecracker in my hand and lighting the wick.

i'll admit, it was pretty easy to love this album when it dropped. his fan base was frothing at the teet for anything that sounded remotely like illmatic. since (not so) arguably the greatest hip hop album there ever was and probably ever will be, nasty nas just got lazier and lazier. nasir may never acknowledge it, but jay-z was right:

four albums in ten years nigga? i can divide

that's one every let's say two, two of them shits was due

one was ehh, the other was illmatic

that's a one hot album every ten year average

so when stillmatic dropped it was hot more often than not, hence the preemptive classic rating. but if nas is one thing, he's a terrible editor. he came in the game with the brilliant idea of a 10 track hip hop album that didn't waste a single second, and then proceeded to jabba the hut the rest of the records he's ever put out.

there are some albums that just need a good sifting through. this is one of them, and here's how it should have been done.

1. stillmatic intro

2. got ur self a gun

3. 2nd childhood

4. ether

5. you're da man - oh god it's so good

6. the flyest

7. rewind

8. rule

9. what goes around

10. one mic

discard 'smokin' because i feel asleep a minute into it, throw out 'my country', it being one of the worst nas songs i've ever heard (and that's saying a lot - browse through street's disciple, his double disc) until i heard 'braveheart party', which was probably left off subsequent pressings of the album because its so goddamn embarrassing, and dismiss 'every ghetto', but do it nicely because you can't always be a complete asshole

it was a hard decision choosing between 'destroy and rebuild' and 'rule'. 'rule' is a commercial sore-thumb, a weak rehash of 'imagine' from it was written. 'destroy and rebuild' is a second diss track that only takes away from the mortal kombat of ether, and come on nobody cares about prodigy, cormega or nature anyways.

i rearranged the tracklist because one mic is just such a dope closer, the dj premier track, 2nd childhood should have come earlier, and i didn't really like hearing ether right off the bat.

stillmatic with old tracklisting: 6/10

stillmatic with new tracklisting: 9/10

any version of stillmatic vs. blueprint: sorry, nasty, jay's all over you like butter on mashed potatoes. hot mashed potatoes.