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I have to preface this with this disclaimer: I am a Nas fan. I actually liked all his other albums (even Nastradamus) - I've got every album he's made on CD and Vinyl. I used to be on the phone/email to Niven when he worked at Sony promotions every time I heard a sniff that there was a new Nas album/single out to earmark my promo 12". I've spent a stupid amount on rare 12es (including £20 on the CNN ft Nas Calm Down promo!) and since the show on 1Xtra, spent money trying to track down clean edits of Nas albums. Gutted I haven't got the Streets Disciple promo album with the original Billy Joel sampling version of Disciple but you can't have everything.

So. Hip-Hop Is Dead.

I've heard about 6 tracks so far and I have to say, the fire is back! The thing that always let Mr Jones down post Illmatic was beat choice - with only a few exceptions, he'd completely outshine the beats he was on. So far, that definitely isn't the case for HHID. Will.I.Am is working hard to prove what the Underground LA scene have known for a long time - that he's a premier HIPHOP producer.

Some people may hate on the first single Hip-Hop Is Dead as the beat uses the same sample as Thief's Theme but if you decipher the lyrics and the vibe, it's definitely one of the best Nas singles. More than deserves to be up there with Nas Is Like, If I Ruled The World and One Love.

For a while, I was thinking that Jigga was doing Nas wrong by pushing back HipHop Is Dead and then releasing Kingdom Come and kinda feared the worst for the quality of the album but I'm gladly being proven wrong with every track that I hear - the last one being Can't Forget About You.

Semtex has heard it and he seems to think that it's the best album of 2006 and from what I've heard, it could wipe the floor with other 2006 relelases: Big Bang, Kingdom Come, Blue Carpet Treatment, Doctor's Advocate, My Ghetto Report Card, Donuts... What do you think? more importantly (as the title of the blog post suggests) will this be Nas' best post-Illmatic album?