Def Jam 011505
Executive producers: Nasir “Nas” Jones, L.A. Reid
Track listing: Queens Get the Money / You Can’t Stop Us Now / Breathe / Make the World Go Round / Hero / America / Sly Fox / Testify / N.I.*.*.E.R. (The Slave and the Master) / Untitled / Fried Chicken / Project Roach / Y’all My Ni**as / We’re Not Alone/ Black President
August 2, 2008
1 week
Nas’s fifth Number One album had the potential to be one of the most controversial titles ever top the album chart. Originally, the New York-based rapper born Nasir Jones planned to call the album, Ni**er, but he backed away from the plan after an unnamed distributor vowed it wouldn’t carry a release sporting such a title.
“I wanna make the word easy on muthafuckas’ ears,” Nas told MTV News, explaining his intent behind the original title. “You see how white boys ain’t mad at ‘cracker’ ’cause it don’t have the same [sting] as ‘ni**er’? I want ‘ni**er’ to have less meaning [than] ‘cracker.'”
Not surprisingly, Nas’s planned title created plenty of controversy. “I’m opposed to anybody using the term,” civil-rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton told MTV. “We’re in an age where they are hanging nooses, they’re locking our kids up in Jena and Florida. We do not need to be degrading ourselves. We get degraded enough. I think we need artists to lift us up, not lock us down.”
Fellow rapper 50 Cent also criticized the title. “Nas sucks,” 50 said. “It’s nonsense, man. That’s a stupid name. It doesn’t make sense. Why would you title it that?”
Although Nas did have the support of his label, Island Def Jam and the company’s chairman, L.A. “Babyface” Reid, ultimately he decided to scrap the title. “If I was the one watching all this shit happen, I would want to see me ride to the end,” Nas told Billboard‘s Hillary Crosley. “Except a lot of so-called black leaders were using my album as a platform for themselves. I would have been fighting not to get the Ni**er album out but to express myself, and that’s not the fight I wanted. This album is about me and how I feel as a Black man.”
Prior to the album’s release, the proposed title alone wasn’t the only Nas-related controversy. The rapper released a video for the track “Be a Ni**er, Too,” featured Nas looking at his own reflection in a mirror while rapping about racism. In the clip’s most incendiary sequence, images of a white slave master pointing a gun at a African-American slave appear before the chorus, “They like to strangle ni**ers / blaming ni**ers / hanging ni**ers / still you wanna be a ni**er too?”
Yet, Nas opted to leave that track off the album. “I didn’t want to ‘ni**er’ my audience to death,” he told Billboard. “So ‘Be a Ni**er Too,’ which I recently released a video for, isn’t on the album. It didn’t fit. The entire record deals with the concept, but every song couldn’t be ‘ni**er.’ I had to pace myself.”
Still, the rapper didn’t shy away from social commentary on the album, which was released with no title. In “Fried Chicken” Nas dishes about racial stereotypes, dangerous women and addictive, but unhealthy eating habits. “N.I.*.*.E.R (The Slave & the Master)” tackles poorly supplied inner-city schools. In “Hero,” the rapper addresses the controversy surrounding the album’s original title, and he tips his hat to Barack Obama in “Black President” and guest Chris Brown as the successor to Michael Jackson in “Make the World Go Round.”
When Nas’s untitled effort debuted at the summit, it did so without the support of a hit single, as”Hero” remained in the lower regions of the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs list.
“From Jay-Z to 50 Cent to Kanye [West], I’ve been around longer than all of them and I don’t need any of their marketing,” Nas told Billboard. “The people are my marketing, and that puts me in a class by myself.” True to his word, the 187,000 copies of untitled sold put Nas by himself at the top spot yet again.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of August 2, 2008
1. Untitled, Nas
2. Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne
3. Mamma Mia!, Sountrack
4. Viva la Vida, Coldplay
5. Camp Rock, Soundtrack