Magic 3 Review

Six albums with one producer in four years is not a thing rappers his age do, and the fact that the run held its level for that long is the story. Hit-Boy's drums stay crisp, the loops stay warm, and Nas raps across them with the ease of someone who no longer has to prove the point. Sitting with My Thoughts and Fever are the tracks that would sit comfortably on the best of the six.

What the reception divided on is whether this one adds anything. The strongest reviews put it at the top of the sequence beside King's Disease III; the cooler ones call it the weakest of the three Magic records and hear a formula that has stopped surprising anyone, including the two men making it. Both are hearing the same album. Its virtues and its shrug are the same virtues and the same shrug as the record before it.

A B, at the strong end. The writing sits above the headline because his pen never dropped through this whole run, and the album around it is comfortable rather than urgent.