The Score: 10/10.

"Where Y'all At" - For years rappers have been sampling lyrics from other rap songs and using them as choruses in new tracks, but you don't often find a rapper borrowing from his own material. And you almost never find a rapper building a new chorus by sampling from one of his old choruses. Nas and producer Salaam Remi do so here and the net effect is extremely positive. Borrowing the "Where them gangstas at, where them dimes at" from there God's Son collaboration "Made You Look," Nas and Remi create a very layered effect with this one.

The sampled chorus introduces the song and is played at low levels, as if to alert the listener that this is old Nas, not new Nas. It is not unlike a film in which a flashback scene is done in a different color scheme, thus providing a visual clue without bludgeoning the viewer over the head with text. The combination of the chorus-sampled-for-the-chorus intricacy and the lower decibel level creates a very subtle chorus that works perfectly as a bridge from one understated-but-deadly verse to another.

I'm not sure if Nas has ever been better lyrically than he is on this song. He is packing so much imagery into such small spaces that it honestly takes multiple listens to absorb what is going on. Not only that, but his dexterity is highly advanced here, chopping up syllables and creating multiple rhyming schemes within the same lines in a way that harkens back to an up-and-coming Eminem. It's hard to find rhyming that comes better than "Fought through with Diesel jeans/lethal green/Oliver People shades when I creep through Queens/with no AK's/I'm the ambassador/Robin Hood in the Aston Mar/lotta blood gonna splash in War."

The track isn't big and explosive, but this is as hard as it gets. In the "who is the best rapper alive" debates, I've always taken Jay-Z, but this one made me look at Nas in a new light. (Pun totally intended.)

The Score: 10/10.

The following songs have been leaked in recent weeks but don't show up on the track listings floating around for Hip-Hop is Dead. So I'm not sure what to make of them, but I'll review them anyway.

"Blood Diamonds" - In case you missed it, conflict diamonds have become a pretty hot topic these days and hip-hop has been at the forefront of the issue. Given the importance of jewelry in hip-hop culture, it is natural that the controversy surrounding the illicit diamond trades of Western Africa would reach rap music. Lupe Fiasco kicked the whole thing off with his song "Conflict Diamonds," which spun the beat from Kanye West's celebration of all things diamonds into a scathing social commentary. Kanye ran with the idea and the result was the aforementioned "Diamonds From Sierra Leone." Now Nas is in the mix in a huge way. He's rumored to be finishing up the score for Blood Diamonds the new Leo DiCaprio Oscar vehicle dealing with conflict diamonds. The soundtrack/score for that film may be where we ultimately find this song, as most of the track listings I've seen for Hip-Hop is Dead do not include "Blood Diamonds."