Nas is back with another project, dropping the Hit-Boy assisted Magic 2, his fifth studio album in just three years.
The 11-track LP arrived Friday (July 21), and clocks in at just over 30 minutes. Nas and Hit-Boy executive produced the project, which only includes two features.
50 Cent fans were hyped when the G-unit mogul announced his surprise appearance on “Office Hours” earlier this week. 21 Savage also features on Magic 2, teaming up with Nas on the previously released “One Mic, One Gun.”
The Nas and Hit-Boy rapper/producer partnership is creating a legacy with five projects over two series.
The duo earned a Grammy for their first King’s Disease collaboration, winning Best Rap Album in 2021. Nas dropped King’s Disease II in 2021 and followed up later that year with Magic. The last in the King’s Disease series, King’s Disease III arrived at the end of 2022.
Stream Magic 2 at the end of the page or listen to it here on Apple Music.
The Queens legend’s prolific output is down to Nas returning to the studio with a consistency he hasn’t experienced in 20 years.
“I’m in one of these creative growth spurts,” he explained to Vanity Fair for their Hip-Hop 50 special last month. “It’s something that I’m really excited about and it surprises me – but I’m not too, too surprised because I was also waiting for the day that I felt like this again, and I knew it would come.”
According to Nas, “It hasn’t been this way for me for probably 20 years. I think that’s what I think today, maybe tomorrow I think about, well, actually accurately seven years, or since I’ve been really in the studio, but when it comes in my head now, it’s been that long—20 years.”