Nas - What Goes Around

"Companies is making money off us. Fast food, cola, soda, skull & bone crosses."

Album: Stillmatic [5th album]
Recorded: Manhattan, New York
Genre: Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop
Album Release: December 18th 2001
Length: 4.59
Producer: Salaam Remi
Vocalist: Nas [age 27] & Keon Bryce
Label: Columbia

Official Audio

Charts, Streams & Sales

Canada (albums): 1x gold
UK (albums): 1x gold
USA (albums): #5 [1x platinum]
Spotify: 3,700,000 +
YouTube Music: 4,900,000 +
Rated as a five mic album by The Source
Chris Rock's Greatest Hip Hop Albums of All Time: #20

Credits

Bass, drums, guitar, organ, percussion, rhodes piano

Details

• 'What Goes Around' is one of my favourite Nas tracks. It has everything he does best: rhyming, flows and social commentary, told in a broad sweep that encapsulates the historic by showing it's relevant to the present. When Nas makes music like this I could listen to it all day, so it's a shame when he starts chasing money and commercialising his sound by using weak hooks from tired, old pop songs.
  
  There are two different versions of Nas: the streetwise philsopher from Illmatic and the radio friendly gangster from Nastradamus, and the two fight for control in a Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Bruce Banner and the Hulk type situation.  I don't blame Nas for wanting money, but I want to him to make the quality music I love, and when he waters it down for commercial appeal, my interest falls through the floor. Nas could have been the single greatest rapper to ever live but he went for dollars instead. At times.
  
  On 'What Goes Around', Nas is everything I want him to be, he tells women they are gorgeous without having had plastic surgery, reminds people that drugs are poison when many rappers glorify drug dealing and he shows awareness of social issues that affect poor people trying to survive, "I'm from poverty neglected by the wealthy", which is a sentiment often absent in a music obsessed with bling.
  
  Then I play a track like 'The Flyest', from the same album, and Nas replies "no doubt" when AZ says "you know we brought the hoes, clothes and money rolls to the table". On 'What Goes Around' he warns people that fast food and drugs are poison, as well as chastising emcees for the poor example they set for kids. While on 'The Flyest' he'll brag about money and hoes and set the same terrible example for kids.The duality in his music is exhausting.
  
  
• When Nas isn't comparing himself to Jesus, he's comparing himself to Pharoah, The cover for his album "I Am" features Nas replete with ancient Egyptian headdress. In the same way as Canibus uses scientific references in his rhymes to give his sentences a unique flavour, Nas uses the historical. On 'Rule', which was the first single from 'Stillmatic', he references "ancient kings from Egypt upto Julius Caesar" and on 'I Can', from 2002, he says
  
  
  "There was empires in Africa called Kush, Timbuktu, where every race came to get books to learn from black teachers, who taught Greeks and Romans, Asian, Arabs and gave them gold"
  
  
  On the same song Nas also claims that a disgruntled Alexander the Great shot the nose off the sphinx as a way of destroying black history, which is completely untrue. Gunpowder didn't exist at the time of Alexander the Great and it was Napoleon who is blamed for the shooting despite all evidence showing the nose was chiselled off centuries before Napoleon's birth. But this is pedantry. To check the veracity of the history is to miss the point.
  
  Nas is representing the past of black people as a way to inspire pride in his present black audience. It's an attempt at taking the onus of black history away from slavery and putting it on the heroic, almost mythical figures of old. All cultures have heroes, whose glorification elevates them to a point beyond that of mere mortals, whether it be Alfred the Great, Joan of Arc, Nefertiti or Gilgamesh. History is itself a story, told and retold, until it becomes mistaken for truth. What is the harm in embellishment for artistic purposes? Especially if it inspires positive change in the present?
  
  When I first heard Nas talk about history it came across as if he was a wise old sage imparting his wisdom to a younger generation. As if he was taking the time out of his busy schedule to impart secret knowledge on his audience. Now I know better, but there's still truth in the music. He tells young women that they should watch out for older men who want to use them for sex. He tells them to use protection and that they don't need peroxide and make-up to be beautiful. He shows awareness of the social issues that affect poor, inner city areas and expresses such concerns with both intelligence and poetry. This is Nas at his best.
  
  
• 'Stillmatic' was an answer to the critics who asked "where's the Nas from 'Illmatic'?" 'Stillmatic' is Nas letting people know he's still here and that he wants to make another album as good as his debut. This parallel is evident on the track listings, as track 7 on Illmatic is titled 'One Love' and track 7 on Stillmatic is titled 'One Mic'.
  
  
• In 2001, at the time of Stillmatic's release, the Jay-Z vs Nas beef was in full swing and it's well known that Jay refers to himself as 'Jehova', which is the Jewish name for God. If Jay-Z was to be Jehovah then Nas would be Jesus, God's son, the Christian God. 'Stillmatic' is the resurrection of Nas. It's him rolling away the boulder and being reborn, in a hip hop sense, returning from the ashes of 'Illmatic'. By the end of the album Nas would not only position himself as a Christ-like figure but as Christ himself. Just as Jay portrays himself to be Jehova, Nas portrays himself as the son of God. Indeed, Nas's next album, released in 2004 would be titled 'God's Son'. The comparisons are even more striking when you consider that, even before this album, Nas had represented himself as Jesus, such as in the music video for 1999's 'Hate Me Now'.
  
  The still below is taken from the video that also featured P. Diddy. Both he and Nas put in some time on the cross. Diddy later regretted his decision and insisted his scenes be cut. When his scenes inevitably aired on MTV, Diddy barged into the offices of Nas's manager, Steve Stoute, and attacked him with a champagne bottle resulting in a court case that cost Diddy a cool half a million dollars.
  
  The point of me retelling this story is to highlight that even the raging fevered ego P. Diddy objected to his personification as Christ. It took him a while, but he objected. Who hasn't accidentally stripped down to a loincloth and posed as Christ for a music video? Nas had no such qualms. From the age of 20 he had been told he'd made the best album of all time. Not the best hip hop album of all time, but the best album. The claim was plausible. He started recording it when he was 17.
  
  Nas perceives what happened to him in the period following 'Illmatic' as similar to what happened to Jesus, he was at first worshipped and then betrayed. His albums, 'It Was Written' (1996), 'I Am' (1999) and 'Nastradamus' (1999) received only a luke-warm reception from hip hop fans. The rapper felt persecuted by the criticism and expressed these feelings in his artistry.
  
  
  
  

Artwork