Nas

The big story in hip-hop for most of 2006 has been the reconciliation between Jay-Z (of Brooklyn) and Nas (Queens), NYC’s two best rappers. Finally, the big story can become the album that resulted from the peace summit—and with all due respect to Clipse, Hip Hop Is Dead is the rap record of the year.

The release of the slightly rickety title track, produced by the ostensibly quite wack will.i.am, as a single was worrisome. But on the album, all concerns are rendered moot by that overlooked skill known as sequencing. Hip Hop Is Dead opens with four booming, no-nonsense tracks in which Nas lays out his blueprint: “Hip hop is dead / We’re the reason it died,” he explains on “Carry on Tradition,” before ripping the younger generation: “I got an exam, let’s see if you pass it / See who can quote a Daddy Kane lyric the fastest.” After nimbly paying tribute to hip-hop’s elders on the subsequent “Where Are They Now,” here comes the single, sounding fresh in the context of the hard, grim cuts preceding it.

The record flows superbly, as other pairs of songs play a sort of call-and-response: After the title track comes the noirish autopsy, “Who Killed It?”; “Not Going Back” (featuring Kelis), about leaving the hood but holding on to its verities, is followed by “Still Dreaming,” which speaks to the youthful hunger Nas still has in huge amounts, more than 12 years after Illmatic. He’s reaching for something more important and less tangible than cash and fame. He’s reanimating hip-hop. — Mike Wolf

Nas plays Nokia Theatre Times Square Fri 22.