This country’s premier ‘city music’ writer, Cyclone, goes beyond the controversy to dissect Nas’ new record Untitled.

In the 2000s hip hop has stagnated following its triumphant crossover in the previous decade when 'urban' became the 'new' pop. Gangsta rap, once incendiary, was co-opted by the mainstream, NWA's powerful rebellion rendered into cliche, like punk before it. Indeed, NWA and that OG, Ice-T, eventually gave way to Generation F(iddy), who fire, not political missives, but novel hits. After the bi-coastal warfare that culminated in the tragic slayings of 2Pac and The Notorious BIG, the corporates commandeered 'the beef' as a marketing ploy. Crunk's rap stars? They threw a big party.
Meanwhile, the underground's 'conscious' MCs romanticise the ol' skool, rhyming over beats derivative of DJ Premier, who's now producing Christina Aguilera. 
In 2006 the Queens veteran Nasir Jones boldly stated what even the most committed hip hopper was thinking deep down on Hip Hop Is Dead. He wasn't necessarily being literal. Nas was playing agent provocateur, challenging hip hop to lift its game. The son of jazz muso Olu Dara, Nas premiered in 1994 with the poetic Illmatic, which established him as the hip hop Tolstoy. The MC struggled to live up to his profound classic.
Perhaps Nas didn't augur the massive controversy surrounding his follow-up to Hip Hop Is Dead. When the MC announced that he was to entitle the LP Nigger, it wasn't just the hip hop contingent who were thrown into turmoil. The White House phoned. As it happens, Nas had sought to give his last album the full title Hip Hop Is Dead… The N. The racial epithet 'nigger' is widely used today in the black community as a term of endearment, replacing 'man'.
The 'N-word' has already been so taken out of historical context as to lose some of its original evil force. This flipping of 'nigger' has parallels in gay subcultures which have reclaimed - and embraced - the demeaning 'queer' or here in Australia where the pejorative 'wog' has been defused. The context really is everything.
Though Nas has abandoned the title Nigger - his album is now officially Untitled - fans will undoubtedly continue to allude to it as such, something the MC has tacitly encouraged. Nas' critics accuse him of gimmickry, or of reinforcing a racial slur that must be relegated to the darkest pages of history, but, in bandying 'nigger' in 2008, he's confronting us with the racial inequalities that still flourish in America. Nas' meaning is very clear. He expounds his position on the tracks America, NIGGER (The Slave And The Master) and Y'all My Niggas, balancing the entertaining with the didactic. 
For Nas to be impelled to ditch Nigger due to corporate - or political - expediency is hypocritical considering that contemporary gangsta rap, a genre glamorising black-on-black crime, is largely tolerated.
Untitled isn't a sensational - or exploitative - album. It's intellectual, philosophical and socio-political. Nas is bringing black academia to the masses. Hip hop needs to be deep in 2008. Why should Nas, who respects his fans' intelligence, not lead a dialogue? And, beyond the beats of Stic.Man, Stargate and Mark Ronson, Untitled is brilliant - Nas represents groundbreaking literary hip hop. No wonder 50 Cent is buggin'. Some 14 years on from Illmatic, Nas is speaking his own truth.
Cyclone
Untitled is out through Def Jam/Universal.