Nas, "Nasty"

Since his all-time classic debut album Illmatic came out in 1994, Nas has all-too rarely sounded as hungry and as honest and as at ease with his prodigious rhyme skills as he did when he said, “When it’s real, you’re doing this even without a record contract.” Unfortunately, since he got a big record contract and accepted the pressure to make big radio hits and sell millions of albums, he’s not well-suited for the sort of high-end production with melodic choruses that tends to enable that. He’s better over simple, less-adorned breakbeats. (The kind rappers tend to rap to even without a record contract.) Fortunately, for his oldest fans at least, his latest single, produced by frequent collaborator Salaam Remi, features the latter — with a wordless chorus that’s basically three notes of horns that might’ve come from a ’60s cop show. And he even made a good video for it!