Let’s face it; every emcee has limitations. And even ones as brilliantly talented as Nas are no exception to the rule. Nas’ weakness was exposed on Nastradamus; a horrid attempt at gaining pop-acceptance, which by there own admission was the last straw for even the most steadfast Nas fan. Though Nastradamus was Nas’ artistic abyss, for an emcee that once uttered “Money Is My Bitch” it also showed just how much the pursuit of record sales and money had changed him, as he went from topically fresh narratives where he recited rhymes as the mind and conscience of a gun (among many)—too busting them.

But let’s give Nas the benefit of the doubt for a moment shall we. Forgetting all of Jay-Z’s “one hot album every ten year average- posturing, Nas was the first artist to really suffer from bootleggers and Internet predators. While rumors of a double-CD abounded during the I Am time frame, the mass-bootlegging of this material compounded with the release of I Am and Nastradamus in a whirlwind seven-month period. But the blame for this does not fall in Nas’ lap. In truth, the music industry as a whole was so unprepared for this new file swapping medium that Columbia panicked and urged Nas to go back into the studio. The result was the Escobar persona that played into the flossy trend that Jigga, Notorious B.I.G., and P. Diddy had ushered in. And if those early advance copies of I Am had not been leaked, we would have seen a very different version of Nastradamus then the debacle that was actually released to the masses.

Though bootlegging and a shift in ideologies set Nas back, a reformed Nasir Jones appeared in 2001 with Stillmatic, a timely comeback that was even more stirring due to his King of NY beef with Jay-Z. Culled from the I Am and Nastradamus sessions, and beefed up with bypassed reels from Stillmatic we now come full circle with The Lost Tapes.

What makes Lost Tapes so captivating is the fact that it’s pure NY hip-hop (including the Alchemist blessed “My Way” & the street economics of “U Gotta Love It”). And while there’s really nothing “Lost” about them (most of the material included here has been widely-available for quite sometime) this release just verifies that you can never date good music. Bottom line, if you have never heard these tracks, then Lost Tapes is a masterpiece. And even if you have heard them ad naseum in an un-mastered form, it’s still pretty fucking dope.

While there is no discernible concept, Lost Tapes is broken down into a few very telling segments. Though strictly a cut and paste endeavor, the story-telling aspects of Nas’ persona take center stage; the dramatic drum claps and devilish strings of “Blaze A 50″ is one of the better throwaway’s from the Esco days, as Nas reverses field and sets up a well-endowed gold digger and “Drunk By Myself” wonderfully encapsulates the pain of a man seemingly on the brink of suicide who feels like he has nowhere else to turn except for the bottle—”anything in my way is dead, cause that’s the way I feel already.” Furthermore, with his Mom debating having an abortion, Nasir Jones beats the odds and shoots his way out his Ma dukes on “Fetus” and pays homage to his father for at least being a father figure throughout his life even though he could not stop chasing skirts on “Poppa Was A Playa” which is cooler then a box of Newport’s. No longer trying to compete with Jay on a flossy level, the pro-black ideology Nas re-instituted on Stillmatic with “Rule” and “What Goes Around” pales in comparison to some of the material that was left on the cutting room floor. Like a sponge that absorbs everything in his vicinity and puts it on pad to move the masses, “Black Zombie”, follows the lead of 2Pac and the sentiments of influential black leaders, urging young minds to control their own destiny and become leaders not followers. Also, “Doo Rags” breezes along thanks to a caressing piano loop, that exudes the soul of Stevie and an introspective lyricism that threatens to make Nas hip-hop’s version of Marvin Gaye —”Am I here for the cause, or just because.”

With such an extensive library of unreleased material some of the choices/exclusions are very interesting and should provide Nas fans plenty of fodder to debate upon. After all, though they appear slightly refurbished, “No Idea’s Original” and “Everybody’s Crazy” were already included on limited editions of Stillmatic. However, while the sparse tracklisting will undeniably have heads wanting more, the brevity is refreshing and if you dust off your copy, you will discover that Illmatic clocked in at a sparse eleven-tracks as well.

With Irv Gotti now handling his career, there is allot of sentiment that Lost Tapes maybe the last “true” glimpse of Nasty Nasir Jones that we will get. Yet, if “Purple” (the lone new entry included here) is any indication, then perhaps Nas will be able to achieve what only a handful of hip-hop artists have been able accomplish with God’s Son; a comfortable medium that will allow him to gain more exposure without alienating his core-audience.

You can hate him now, but Nas has his mind right again and all that’s left to find out is whether, or not, Columbia is wise enough to make Lost Tapes a yearly ritual. Regardless, with all of the changes hip-hop has undergone, just being able to soak up an LP that contains no additives or preservatives is cause for enough celebration. Though it is every artist’s rite of passage to choose the direction he wants to take with his career, the AZ sampled voice hook of “You Gotta Love It” seems to ponder the obvious—”so this is what they want huh.” What Nas, you didn’t know?