After 1st Listen: King's Disease 2 by Shawn William
Disclaimer- To fully digest this album I suggest listening to it on a car drive with a nice sound system, no distractions or with quality headphones. Do not give me your opinion if you listened to it on computer or laptop speakers.
After 1st listen I give King's Disease II 🔥 🔥 🔥.5 flames out of 5. The album starts off like it's a problem. Deathrow East speaks on a pivotal point in the East vs West coast beef when Nas & Pac met up in NYC with a bunch of goons ready to go (A story Snoop embellished) but was able to walk away respecting each other. Imagine Pac in the "Street Dreams" video. Man
I get nervous when your favorite 80s rappers get on 2021 tracks but Erick & Parish did their job on EPMD 2. They didn't give us straight 16s which was smart, more like old school Jada & Styles 2 bar set ups finishing each other's thoughts. Nas followed & blacked the f**k out, riding the uptempo beat perfectly "this is that f**k up the summer shit" and then Marshall came *Swizz Beatz voice* "Jeeeeesuuuss". I know Nas fans won't like it but "Eminem murdered you on your own shit". "Respectfully"
From there imo the album levels off. Though I like "YKTV" & "Store Run" it didn't give me the same feel as the prior songs. "Moments" was meh, and then "Nobody" featuring Mrs. Lauryn Hill. I just knew that we'd either get a sample of Lauryn singing the hook but I was wrong we got the great L-Boogie giving us BARS! It was great hearing her rap but her rap imo wasn't that great. Don't @ me. BTW, it's still not a good enough excuse to be late Queen.
The rest of the album was hit & miss for me. Charlie Wilson made another collaboration with Esco but it wasn't like the first.
"Brunch on Sunday" was definitely for the Hookah & Mimosas Mamis who spend time with their "Besties" creating weirdo IG videos. I could do without.
After that the only song after that caught my ear was "My Bible".
For a 47 year old rapper who's best album was arguably 27 years ago it shows how great Nasir Jones is to put out a solid album. He still has bars for days, He & Hit Boy seem to have a winning chemistry though I wish maybe another producer got on board (Maybe Dre, Daz or Quik for "Deathrow East" & Erick Sermon on "EPMD 2") just to give a different feel because at times the sound sounded redundant but otherwise it's still a solid album worth listening too.