For Nas' part, he does his best to save the track from itself. He sounds energized and after years of trying to sound passionate about important topics, he finally stumbled upon something that truly matters to him - rap itself. Calling hip-hop his first wife, he goes on a tirade about the state of the industry and the dilution of the art. Musicians making music about music is not usually where we find great art, but in this case, Nas is following a popular axiom, which is "write what you know." It's not an attempt to inspire cultural change like "I Can" or even a social critique like that "Imagine" track he did with Pitbull, but he attacks the topic with energy and vigor and the result is some of his best rapping in years.

Too bad will.i.am was around to taint it. Oh well, at least he didn't lace us with one of those awful sing-song choruses like he did on Busta's Big Bang.

The Score: 8/10.

"Black Presidents" - This is one of those songs that just feels important. After all, Jay-Z guests on it, which seemed like an impossible scenario a few years ago, at the height of the Takeover/Ether/Super Ugly/Got Yourself a Gun era. The hatchet was buried between Jay-Z and Nas last year at a big concert spectacle, but somehow, the two of them appearing on an official track seems to mean more. The former feels like a publicity stunt done for the benefit of the audience (see: 50 and the Game) while the latter is an actual artistic collaboration with far-reaching implications. So this is kind of a big deal.

As for the song itself, I think it holds the weight of those lofty expectations. Nas lets Jay-Z rap first over a scorching L.E.S. beat and Hova delivers 16 bars that rival anything he dropped on Kingdom Come, or really anything he's done since "Diamonds From Sierra Leone." With lines like "peddling over the oven/we was like brothers then/though you was nothing other than the son of my mother's friend" Jay launches into a nostalgic "what went wrong?" reflection that is ten times more effective than his similar efforts on "Lost Ones."

As for Nas, I think he actually gets the better of Jay here, in spite of the fact that the beginning of his verse is interrupted by that stupid "play it back" gimmick (exhausted in 50 Cent's "I'm an Animal"). He is razor sharp here, layering hood critiques with bravado and mixing it with the same autobiographical flavor that Jay-Z lends to his verse. When Nas spits out the lines "I'm standing on the roof of my building/a feeling/a whirlwind of beef I'm inhaling/just like an acrobat ready to hurl myself through the hoops and fires/sippin' 80 proof, bulletproof under my attire," you have to resist the urge to hit rewind before the song is even over.