Nas: The Lost Tapes (2LP, remaster) [LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 2LP set gives the album four sides and plenty of room for its sparse, piano-led beats. It debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 with over 70,000 copies sold in its first week.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered
• Gatefold jacket
• Obi strip
• Numbered

About the album

Most rappers' leftovers stay in the drawer for a reason. Nas's leftovers had already escaped: several songs from the I Am... sessions leaked online as MP3s and on underground mixtapes, which kept them off that album. Columbia and Ill Will gathered the best of them, plus outtakes from the Stillmatic sessions, mastered them properly and put them out in 2002, right in the glow of Nas's comeback year.

The mood is quiet and reflective, with soft piano, subtle strings and mellow soul loops from L.E.S., The Alchemist, Poke and Tone, Precision, Rockwilder and Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie. "Doo Rags" looks back at a Queensbridge youth over a jazzy piano figure, "My Way" remembers his late friend Ill Will, "No Idea's Original" sizes up the competition, "Drunk by Myself" plays like a short film, and "Fetus" tells his life story from before he was born. There are no guest verses at all, just Nas and the beat.

Critics heard his sharpest writing since Illmatic, and a second volume finally turned up in 2019. For a set of songs nobody was meant to hear, it has been heard rather a lot.

Also at Kops: more Nas on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On Ill Will / Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19658756941), a reissue of the 2002 compilation.