Magic (Nas & Hit-Boy Album)

Things Get ‘Ugly’ In Nas And Hit-Boy’s Latest Video From Their Joint Project, ‘Magic’

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Nas isn’t resting on his laurels after achieving new successes in his career. After winning Best Rap Album at the 2021 Grammy Awards, he performed at the ceremony for the first time at this year’s awards, delivering a career retrospective via a medley of hits spanning the past 25 years. Despite reaching these new plateaus, he’s not taking any time off to celebrate, dropping a new video for the song “Ugly” from his and Hit-Boy’s third joint project, Magic.

Produced by ASAP Rocky’s media company AWGE, the abstract, black-and-white video is pieced together from archival footage taken around the city of New York, spliced in with shots of Nas rapping the lyrics of the song in the back of a limo with a female companion. The video ends with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Despite Magic being less than five months old, Nas and Hit-Boy are already hard at work on their third installment of the King’s Disease series, which has been credited by fans as rejuvenating Nas’ public perception. Nas is also preparing to embark on the NY State Of Mind Tour with Wu-Tang Clan beginning late this summer.

Watch Nas and Hit-Boy’s “Ugly” video above.

Nas And ASAP Rocky Play Many Characters In Their New York-Lauding ‘Wave Gods’ Video

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Just before the end of 2021, Nas and Hit-Boy — who have become quite the dynamic duo lately — surprised fans with their latest collaborative project, Magic. The album was a welcome inclusion to the rap partnership’s growing catalog of collaborative projects, which already included King’s Disease and King’s Disease II. One of the benefits for Nas of working with Hit-Boy was the inclusion of younger voices to Nas’ list of collaborations, which helped to reverse the narrative the rap vet was out-of-touch with contemporary hip-hop.

One of the voices included on Magic is that of ASAP Rocky, who appears on the Max B shout-out track “Wave Gods” along with a thrilling turntable performance from DJ Premier. Today, Nas and Rocky released the song’s video, a love letter to the gritty New York streets from which both men hail. Rather than showing off tourist destinations like Times Square, though, they display the New York they know, from housing projects to crowded subway cars, as both Nas and Rocky portray a variety of characters from the dice rolling residents of the high-rises to the homeless vagrants who populate bus stop benches.

Watch Nas and Hit-Boy’s “Wave Gods” video featuring ASAP Rocky and DJ Premier above.