TierMarks

Nas

Every album we have reviewed, graded S to F.

Albums graded
20
Critic’s grade
Highest grade
Average grade
Graded S
1
Span
1994 to 2023

No. 6 on Top 10: Rap Discographies, graded A as a body of work.

Every album

20 albums, 1994 to 2023, each placed by its grade, then sorted onto the board.

The career, graded
1994 to 2023

S tier

A tier

B tier

C tier

D tier

The records

Newest first, each with the line its review opens on.

  1. 2023Magic 2The fifth record with the same producer in three years, and the first one where the formula shows.
  2. 2023Magic 3The sixth and last of the Hit-Boy run, landing on his fiftieth birthday and knowing it.
  3. 2022King's Disease IIINo guest verses at all, which turns out to be exactly the confidence the trilogy needed to finish on.
  4. 2021King's Disease IIThe sequel is where the partnership clicks, darker and tighter, with nothing on it going to waste.
  5. 2021MagicNine tracks dropped on Christmas Eve, lean and cold and built for people who only want the rapping.
  6. 2020King's DiseaseOne producer, one register, and the first Nas album in a decade that sounds finished on purpose.
  7. 2019The Lost Tapes 2Seventeen years of offcuts, and this time the reason they were offcuts is audible.
  8. 2018NasirSeven tracks, twenty six minutes, and it still plays like a sketch that got released by accident.
  9. 2012Life Is GoodDivorce, fatherhood and an ex wife's dress on the sleeve, handled with more grace than the subject usually gets.
  10. 2010Distant RelativesNas and Damian MarleyTwo catalogs that should not fit, welded together by the best set of beats either of them had that decade.
  11. 2008UntitledThe most political record he ever makes, and the one where the beats most often let the argument down.
  12. 2006Hip Hop Is DeadA great title, a real argument, and a record that keeps stumbling over the thesis it wants to prove.
  13. 2004Street's DiscipleA double album about marriage, history and fatherhood that would be a very good single album.
  14. 2002God's SonGrief does what a rap feud could not and hands him a subject he cannot posture his way around.
  15. 2002The Lost TapesThe offcuts that outrank the albums they were cut from, which says something about both.
  16. 2001StillmaticThe comeback works because he stops defending the throne and starts writing like he wants it back.
  17. 1999I Am...Half of a great record, and the surviving half keeps reminding you how much of it went missing.
  18. 1999NastradamusRushed out eight months after the last one, and it sounds it from the concept down to the hooks.
  19. 1996It Was WrittenHe trades the tenement window for a widescreen crime picture, and the writing survives the bigger budget.
  20. 1994IllmaticTen tracks, no filler, and the blueprint for what a rap album can be. Nothing on it has aged a day.