TICKETS: Tickets go on sale starting Tuesday, April 26th at 10am local at
Louis, MO making stops across North America in Atlanta, Toronto, Austin, and more before wrapping up in Los Angeles, CA at Hollywood Bowl. Produced by Live Nation, the 25-city tour kicks off on Tuesday, August 30th at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in St. Today, Hip Hop icons Wu-Tang Clan and Nas have announced their upcoming legendary co-headlined NY State of Mind tour. (Meanwhile, it feels like a jab at Nas - and Kanye for that matter - that Jay and Beyonce dropped their far superior Everything Is Love just one day after NASIR.Tickets On Sale Starting Tuesday, April 26th at 10am Local at Jay-Z was accused of something a little less violent than Nas, so it isn't entirely comparable, but still, many noted that the grown up, introspective version of Jay we saw on 4:44 was similar to the version of Nas we saw on 2012's Life Is Good, which makes it even more confusing that Nas is pulling a Benjamin Button here. Last year, Nas' longtime frenemy Jay-Z responded to the rumors of his infidelity that were started by Beyonce's Lemonade on his own 4:44, and that album was hailed as one of Jay's best in a while. NASIR is the first album that Nas released since his ex-wife Kelis accused him of physically abusing her during their marriage, and I don't know if there's any real way that Nas could make up for his alleged treatment of women on this album, but it's probably not by rapping this: "Spent twenty on a bad bitch I hardly know / New girl every night, two girls was every other night / Sexual addition, gangster tradition / They wanna fuck me, have me under they belt, slightly offended." Nas' silence on those allegations is more deafening than usual in an era where male celebrities are being taken to task for their treatment of women, and where some of Nas' peers are handling things like this with at least a bit of grace. Nas is a virtuoso, so, equipped with some classic Kanye beats, it seemed virtually impossible that he too wouldn't come out with his most energized album in years. The throwback-yet-refreshing production helped energize Push, and in return he spit some of his finest bars in years.
Kanye gave Push a selection of hard-hitting, head-nodding tracks that hearkened back to the kind of production he was giving Jay-Z in the early 2000s. That's why it sounded so exciting when we learned that Nas was putting out an album produced entirely by Kanye West, and it seemed even more exciting once we heard the kinds of beats Kanye made for the great new Pusha T album. As good a rapper as he is - and he's one of the best to ever do it - Nas isn't really the musical visionary type, so without the right producer to help push him forward, he's never really made too drastic a progression over the years. It's fair criticism, really - Illmatic had the dream team of DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, and Q-Tip, and Nas was never able to come up with a better batch of producers than he had for that album. "Never sold a record for the beat, it’s my verses they purchase / Without production, I’m worthless / But I’m more than the surface," Nas raps on "Simple Things," the last of the seven tracks on his new Kanye-produced album NASIR, and it's easy to read into this as a response to the critics of Nas' beat-picking over the years.