Kanye, Eminem, and Nas Are Working Faster Than Ever—Is That a Good Thing?

From Kanye to Eminem, the legends of hip-hop are rolling out albums faster than ever. It could be a sign that they’re reacting to a time of instant feedback.

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In April, Kanye West announced that he would be producing five albums, including two—Ye and Kids See Ghosts—that would count as his own. As we all know by now, the rollout was an ambitious effort, and counted as more of a cultural moment than a presentation of classic material. Even that moment came and went, as it was surrounded by the releases of Drake’s Scorpion and the long-rumored Beyoncé and JAY-Z collaboration album.

So when Kanye revealed Monday night that he was releasing yet another album in 2018, Yandhi, it didn’t quite come as a surprise. Yes, it didn’t make logistical and historical sense. But Kanye, as of late, appears increasingly concerned with keeping up with the breakneck speed of the music industry in the age of the internet. More than that, he seems to be fixated on the very public and divided response to Ye, which was barely bested by Nasir as the most forgettable album in the G.O.O.D. bunch Kanye oversaw. In other words: Kanye is reacting. And it’s a curious sight to see.

The Kanye we were familiar with was a man who would place himself in the center of a chaotic industry and hold his ground as an individual. He was sure of his position in hip-hop and invited everyone watching and listening to move with him or around him. That changed with The Life of Pablo. After the album came out, he introduced the idea of post-release tweaking, a clear indicator that he was no longer satisfied to drop a piece of work and let it stand as is. It was our first look at the wavering of a usually self-confident musical entity who had us all convinced he was (and is) one of our generation’s most influential artists.

Now, as we face our third Kanye album of the year—and if you count the recently announced Chance collab Good Ass Job, and the less-likely-to-happen Watch the Throne 2, we’re in for a fourth and fifth—several things have become apparent. The most clear of them is that Kanye is actively planning his work based on how we—fans, journalists, haters, etc.—react.

Bruh, these Kanye bars are all types of cringe. And he swore these rhymes were that business. If you flew to Wyoming for 7 tracks of mediocrity...oof. pic.twitter.com/OoSg038IqM
I listened to the Kanye album and.... Yikes pic.twitter.com/PSlfxUW2rM
#YeAlbum is basura...and the sycophants calling it genius are like the emperor's subjects in The Emperor's New Clothes...
it’s insane lol. Like Ye’s last album was NOT good. At all
Performing on SNL and dropping the album.

He is dead ass about to make up for “Ye.” Son of a bitch Kanye...
I know this album is going to be better than Ye. I know it is. If it’s not I’m fighting everybody on sight.

And he’s not the only one.

In late August, just eight months after the release of 2017’s Revival, Eminem surprise-released Kamikaze. Before that, his most recent drop was The Marshall Mathers LP 2, from 2013.

On Revival, Em delivered bars that left listeners wanting more, to put it lightly.

Damn. Eminem said “I’m swimming in that Egyptian river because I’m in denial” in 2017. I’m not mad, just disappointed.
eminem really said "your booty is heavy duty like diarrhea" and people have the nerve to call him one the greatest rappers of all time
“My competition can't see me 'cause I don't own a mirror”. #EMINEM  #Revival pic.twitter.com/93kCoemsbH
I guess you could say that I Need a Doctor to REVIVE my ears after listening to that new Eminem album...shit was corny as this tweet #revival

On Kamikaze, Eminem’s longtime manager and business partner, Paul Rosenberg, is featured in a skit in which, via voicemail, he tells Em that it might not be such a good idea to release a follow-up album addressing the less-than-positive critical reaction to Revival.

Are you really gonna just reply to everybody who you don't like what they have to say about you or the stuff you're working on? I mean, I don't know if that's really a great idea. It's like, what's next? Kamikaze 2, the album where you reply to everybody who didn't like the album that you made replying to everybody that didn't like the previous album? It's a slippery slope.

Em follows up with an obviously dramatized response in which he says no, he doesn’t plan to fire back at everybody who’s criticized his work—but he delivers this assurance as he’s “on his way” to a critic’s house, presumably to square up.

In a tweet promoting the album, Em wrote: “Tried not 2 overthink this 1... enjoy,” accompanied by a middle-finger emoji. It was telling of what was to come.

Tried not 2 overthink this 1... enjoy. 🖕#KAMIKAZE Out Now - https://t.co/ANw73KbwMt pic.twitter.com/qfQoTYBTUy

With Kamikaze, Em addresses detractors and the underwhelming response to Revival overall. On “Greatest,” he borrows a flow from Kendrick Lamar (via “Humble”) to poke fun at himself: “Revival didn't go viral!/Denaun and Royce tell me that I should take the high road/Fuck that, I'm finna hit back.” On the very next track, “Lucky You,” he doubles down and lets us know he’s not shying away from a little negativity: “They’re asking me, ‘What the fuck happened to hip-hop?’/I said, ‘I don't have any answers.’/‘Cause I took an L when I dropped my last album/It hurt me like hell, but I’m back on these rappers.”

The fact is, Marshall Mathers is aware of the chatter around his work. Once upon a time, it didn’t matter. He sold millions upon millions of albums and was fiercely protected and insulated by his stans. But in our current digital climate, with everyone able to make their voices and opinions heard through social media, Em is a little more present, a little more vulnerable—and a lot more willing to go back to the drawing board.

Nas is another rapper in the midst of tearing up his tried-and-true career blueprints. Before Nasir came out this summer, he hadn’t released an album since Life Is Good in 2012. The talk around Nasir initially centered around the listening session, which featured a Kardashian crew more prominently than Nas himself. Once the event concluded and the proverbial adrenaline stopped rushing, listeners got a chance to really sit with the album—and it was clear this wasn’t his best effort, lyrically or otherwise.

The following month, in July, Nas sat down with Angie Martinez for an iHeartRadio interview. During the conversation, he announced that he was already whipping up another project. “It’s another album that I already had been working on before [Nasir],” he said. “Since I did this, I gotta do something that, you know, goes in another direction a little bit. So I’m finishing up the next one.” Nas went on to tell Martinez that the wait for the next album was “not gonna be that long because half of it was already there.”

And another Nas album on the way. He has been in with Swizz Beatz and RZA. pic.twitter.com/E9uaZLvi0o

We’d have to travel back in time, to 1999, to find Nas at this level of productivity. (He was perhaps inspired then by DMX’s successful one-two punch of It's Dark and Hell Is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, both released in 1998.) On the cusp of the new millennium, Nas released I Am… and Nastradamus. As the story goes, I Am… was originally set to be a double album, but because of heavy bootlegging, it was downsized to one disc, which came out that April. Nastradamus, which was originally supposed to consist of songs from the I Am… recording sessions, was later (and quickly) flipped into an almost entirely new set of tracks, which are widely considered to be Nas’ weakest. That one arrived in November.

That exception aside, Nas typically does not release albums less than a year apart. So it says something about him, and our veterans writ large, that they would gamble with playing such a young artist’s game: They’re just trying again and again to connect with their listeners, almost as if they don’t have decades of accolades propping them up.

Jumping into another project could be Nas attempting to distance himself from what was just released. He’s moving swiftly and transitioning right along to the next one, and he couldn’t have picked a better time to act fast.

Hip-hop fans today have far shorter memories than even a few years ago. In addition to high-frequency releases, there are other ways to attack that: Drake, Migos, and Rae Sremmurd all delivered albums with 24 or more tracks this year. They recognized that in throwing dozens of tracks out to the wolves at once, at least some of them would make an impact. Not only that, it would happen immediately, instead of sparsely and spread out across several efforts.

Our veterans seem to be up for taking a risk. They’re not just looking at their own hands, but at the landscape in full. Their surveillance and subsequent reactions bring to mind the hustler who comes through a barbershop in a trench coat filled with who knows what, wearing his customers down with each pitch of a random-ass product: “You didn’t fuck with that? Don’t even trip—what about this one?”

And, honestly, why not? By all appearances, it seems like everybody’s adapting by moving along quickly. But there are some exceptions.

JAY-Z, who’s been in this game beyond a minute, is taking an entirely different approach to wrestling with a fast-changing industry. He’s putting out story-driven, hyper-personal bodies of work that are tightly bound, conceptually. He’s more calculated than his veteran counterparts; he’s thinking bigger than knee-jerk reactions to uncomfortable feedback. He’s more confident in his output, and it shows in the reception.

Even though his latest effort, the joint project Everything Is Love with Beyoncé, didn’t quite stick to the ribs of hip-hop fans, JAY’s not chasing after it with another album. He knows he dropped a gem. We just happen to be living in an era where even the best gets lost in the shuffle. The weak shit gets lost even faster.

Once upon a time, ‘Ye, Em, and Nas were some of the most confident storytellers of our time. They unfurled the most compelling narratives hip-hop has ever seen—which is why seeing them trade substance for quantity is particularly disorienting. In the year of our Lord 2018, our legends are no longer driving and transforming the industry in the ways they once did. Like their successors, they’re swept up in the gold rush of virality, the new game of landing a solid shot to the gut of our culture’s memory. If it doesn’t land, they’ve adapted to the latest rules: Just keep it moving.

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