NO PREREQS

It’s not often you hear a song that just completely clicks with you. I recently had this experience with Loco-Motive from Nas’ new album, Life is Good, and so I wanted to share some thoughts on why I think this is a track good enough to write a 1000 something words about - and how it teaches an unexpected but valuable life lesson.

So here’s a breakdown of what makes this track so special...


1) The BEAT

One of the biggest knocks on Nas as an artist post God’s Son is his truly sub-par beat selection. On this song, as soon as you hear the sounds of the train cars whipping by on the tracks it sets the tone for what has got to be one of the best Nas beats of the last decade. Why?

The heavy hitting kicks “pa-pum, pum-pah” propel this track like a loco-motive: slow, labourous, and with a gritty sound that Nas’ vocals dominated throughout Illmatic. The old-western style riff perfectly complements some of Nas’ punchlines, “F*ck your ice / I rock rubies, amythest”. More importantly, it’s the buildup to the piano sequence. Not just any piano sequence, but one that pushes this beat to all-time consideration for grimiest of all time with its low notes super reminiscent of NY state of mind.

2) The hook

The majority of Nas’ best songs come sans-chorus, so it’s no surprise that there’s no cheesy hook on this jam. But just when you think you’ve heard every variation of a break between verses, you hear Large Professor straight up Mike Tysoning (see 2^nd Round K.O.). It’s already sick enough that the beat practically disappears below Prof’s aggressive machismo, but its accompanied by a sound from the train audio that I can only imagine as the sound of Large Professor smacking the life out of the punk he’s lecturing.

3) The imagery

Nas’ lyrical prowess is well known but at least in his recent work, he always seems to do more preaching and less storytelling. But here, his storytelling sounds like it’s still pretty unparalleled, 21 years in the game... “At night, New York, eat a slice too hot / use my tongue to tear the skin hanging from the roof of my mouth”. In my opinion, the greats at storytelling in rap differentiate themselves by being as detailed as possible while doing it with as few words as possible. Nas achieves that in the pizza slice line... he doesn’t even mention that it’s pizza, but could you have a stronger image (or better yet, feeling evoked by the image)?? I cringed at that line when I first heard it because I felt like I was tearing the skin from the roof of MY mouth. That is fricken creepy! Also, his storytelling about robbing people after they get off the train... so sick.  

4) The multis

You know how some rappers are known for multis (Kool G Rapp, Eminem)? Well, Nas is not exactly famous because of his tendency to rhyme multiple times in a single bar, which is what makes the effortless manner in which he pulls it off here even more impressive. "It's ghetto beef, sinister n*ggas snicker through yellow teeth / alcohol aging my n*ggas faster than felonies", I mean it’s hard enough to pull off a multi, but VERY few artists can create rhymes that combine that kind of technical skill with actual lyrics that make good sense, let alone ones that paint an extremely clear picture like the line above.  

5) The elegance of Nas’ delivery

This is where I’ll try not to explode in awe like, “How the F does this guy pull this sh*t off?!” But trust me, it’s tough to contain myself. Nas is not only on point with every single bar, but he switches styles multiple times throughout the song while keeping so much CHARACTER in his delivery. He starts the song ripping up the canvas with the shredder-fast style he’s perfected recently. As soon as the piano riff comes in (about the point where he’s bragging about “putting scars on n*ggas”), he adjusts his flow to compensate for the change in sound. He convinces you where he says, “The truth is the truth/ I really put my scars on niggas” Right afterwards in the lines, “They wear them lifetime, they tell they hoes, Nas did this/ Pointing to they scars like/ Right here, baby, really Nas did this”, he actually sounds like one of the dudes who would go running to their partner bragging about a scar from Nas.

I had to stop myself from doing a line by line analysis of his delivery here because I swear it was going to become that. But if you’re not convinced yet, take one final example: how Nas takes the simple bars, “How dare I? / Must be, something in the air that corrupts me / Look at my upkeep, owned and sublease / I'm here y'all” and uses his mastery of delivery to build them into a climatic ending to the song.

Bonus: The lyrical significance

Now, I only wanted to go over  5 points but one thing I’d enjoy writing about is the actual lyrical significance of this song, because this is one thing that is always questioned when it comes to hip hop. Nas’ entire album Life is Good is probably one of the most well thought out and mature albums in hip hop. Just because this song visits his QB roots, don’t think it is a departure from that theme.

The first verse starts with an unadulterated account of some wild aspects of Nas’ character: his love for weed and his aggressive, confident view of himself, as well as the luxuries he enjoys. However, he quickly changes the tune of this Watch the Throne-like verse (sorry, couldn’t help it), when he straight up says that he is not trying to intimidate anyone, just telling war stories of the past that he recognizes come with karma. There’s a sense of “I have nothing to prove to you” that sets this verse’s tone apart from most other braggadocio.

The next verse is a short one where he has some powerful lyrics that reveal his inner struggle to keep in perspective the different challenges he’s faced and overcome in his life with larger themes like relative struggle and money’s relation to happiness. There are at least a few good quotes from this verse that reflect Nas’ maturity.

Finally, in the last verse, Nas takes us through the days of his youth and memories of his beloved city. This is important because he is sharing the stories that captivate us, whether it is because we can relate or conversely, because they are so outlandish. He recognizes that the crimes he committed as a youth were misguided, “Minor thief shit, minor league shit, beasting/Looking for the juks young, but now we older chiefing” but is looking back with a fondness to show that he recognizes that his experiences then have shaped him today. At the end of the verse, he pulls his past together by jokingly questioning himself as he imagines critics of his unlawful youth years would "How dare I? /  Must be, something in the air, that corrupts me". But through to the end of the song, he maintains that he is successful today not despite, but because of, his unique formative years, "look at my upkeep / owned and sublease".

The message here is that Nas has embraced and reconciled various identities he has held throughout his life, realizing that they are all essential to what makes him who he is today. A lesson I think is worth learning. 

And he makes a damn captivating track out of it.