Nas

Though generally panned as pandering to pop audiences, Nas' third album, 1999's I Am still has a handful of classic tracks. "New York State of Mind (Part II)" finds the Queensbridge rapper returning to the sort of harrowing ghetto surveys that made him his generation's most critically celebrated rapper, while "Ghetto Prisoners" asks, "Who should be praised: the mighty dollar or the mighty Allah?" Nas prefers the former on hit single "Hate Me Now," which features P. Diddy and is the hip-hop equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer film: empty but exciting.

"I'm at the Gambling spot/My hands on a knot/New York Yankees cap cover my eyes/Stand
in one spot/ I take a nigga's dough/Send him home to his shoe box/You lost that, nigga/I'll
put your dollar in a jukebox," Nas raps on "N.Y. State of Mind Pt. II." Since his
much-heralded arrival, in 1994, Nasir Jones has raised the stakes for urban elocutionists
with mood-setting lines like this scenario of a cool criminal scheming on a vic. Bu... More >