Byron Crawford is one of the few independent hip-hop bloggers remaining from the medium’s halcyon days in the mid to late 2000’s. As his colleagues were signed by mainstream online publications, Crawford remained free. He has self-published his third e-book, Nas Lost: A Tribute to the Little Homey, a much-deserved takedown of one of rap’s biggest disappointments.
Crawford analyzes how the rapper who debuted with one of the genre’s most influential albums could go on to a career of diminishing returns and public embarrassment.
Illmatic is a dissertation on the power and importance of hip-hop. Nas paints in the album’s 40-minute running time a concise picture of how the drugs and violence in 1990s New York City damaged his community, rapping from the perspective of a world-weary cynic despite being only twenty at the album’s release.
His rhymes were made even more potent by a roster of producers whose unique sound set the standard for the genre from 1994 onward. Illmatic’s canonical importance lies in that it can also be doubled as a historical document of a failing New York City in the early 1990s.
As Crawford demonstrates, this would be the peak of Nas’ career.
Nas Lost’s cover is of a caricature of Nasir Jones’ face from the cover of Illmatic wearing a dunce hat. The cover is an accurate depiction of Nas’ later exploits: He is emotionally and professionally stunted.
For as hyper-masculine as rap is, Nas has endured in spite of continuously being a victim. He has been a victim of impossibly high expectations in trying to replicate anything remotely close to his classic debut. He has been so obsessed in catching lightning twice, hip-hop has long left the little homey in the dust.
Crawford documents Nas’ inconsistent career between 1994’s seminal Illmatic to 2012’s solid Life is Good. It’s not like Crawford has to stretch in an effort to portray Nas’ career as disappointing. The quality of his musical output varies so widely that listeners have questioned for years why they give the guy $15 for another unsatisfying album.
Crawford really lays into Nas in the mid-2000s, when the South became the center of hip-hop’s universe with help of white "cultural tourists."
The popularity of simple drivel like "Laffy Taffy" and "Crank That Soulja Boy" attracted opportunistic tastemakers who saw money to be made despite never having listened to hip-hop before.
The surge in that region’s popularity forced Nas to use cheap media tricks to sell records. He telegraphed his pandering by titling an album "Hip-Hop is Dead" and appearing on another’s cover with his back scarred by whiplashes, suggesting he was a slave to the system.
Jay Z famously said he dumbed down his lyrics to move units, but was smart enough to not let his ambitions get out in front of him. Poor Nas wasn’t even clever enough to hide his intentions.
Crawford trains his juiciest salvos on Rap Genius, a site devoted to explaining rap lyrics founded by three hip-hop "carpetbaggers making a shedload of money off of a culture they didn’t really know anything about, and not providing anything of real value in return." Crawford exposes the ignorance of its users co-opting and profiting from hip-hop. And he hammers Nas for being one of the first rappers to endorse the site.
Crawford’s stream-of-conscious writing style remains intact in book form: He will go off on pages-long tangents touching on topics from politics to the economy to violence by using rap music as a springboard to his perspective.
Crawford’s disdain for modern rap and disillusionment with the state of the genre often dovetail into hilariously offensive jokes and opinions ranging from race to the opposite gender.
Nas Lost makes several thought-provoking connections between Nas’ career and society at large. Unfortunately, these insights occasionally get lost in Crawford’s borderline reprehensible ruminations on race and gender. While guiltily laughing along, Crawford’s independence allows him write books true to his heart.
Depressingly, that luxury has eluded Nas.