Hip hop seems to be a stagnating genre. There are always new artists releasing discs, yet at the same time, exploration within the genre is lacking. Perhaps the notion of bragging about material possessions like jewelry and cars has grown tired to many. Enter Nas, one of the stalwarts in hip hop over the last decade. He too seems to share the sentiments by titling his latest effort Hip Hop is Dead.

Nas has lately been expressing his longing for the earlier days of hip hop, when the music was more about the creativity and exploration, as well as lyrics that were more politically relevant and thought-provoking. This perhaps best comes to fruition on the third track on the album, “Carry on Tradition.” Nas bites back at newer hip hop artists with this indignant rhyme: ''Some of these new rappers got they caps flipped backwards/With they fingers intertwined in some gang sign madness/I got an exam let's see if ya'll pass it/Let's see who can quote a Daddy Kane line the fastest.”

Some of Nas’s peers in the music industry think that the title of the album is in fact a shot at Southern hip hop, with artists like Ludacris, Trick Daddy, and Lil’ Wayne being precisely the artists he is indicting with this record. This genre is often seen as the most materialistic and narcissistic of the entire hip hop genre.

The message of the album aside, this is a superb example the hip hop genre. The layers of production, done mostly by Will.i.am, one of the vocalists in the Black Eyed Peas, on this album help to present a depth that is not often found on records by Nas’s peers due to the presence extensive bass, drums, brass, and strings; it sounds very epic. Coupled with Nas’s penchant for being one of the better lyricists and rhymers in the scene, you have a mighty fine album.

This album is the first Nas album on the seminal Def Jam label—a label now headed by the King of Hip Hop, Jay-Z. This is interesting given their history; Jay-Z and Nas had been embroiled in a feud that lasted many years, one that produced some of the harshest verbal cross-fire in the history of hip hop. They patched their relationship last year when Nas performed alongside Jay-Z in a concert in East Rutherford, NJ in 2005. Here they collaborate on the song “Black Republican,” a song that features a sample from “Marcia Religiosa,” a song from the Godfather Part II soundtrack. It is this type of depth found on a Nas record that seems to be lacking on many more records in the genre.

Alhtough the title of the album seems to mock the current state of the hip hop world, Nas is out to demonstrate that hip hop is not dead, rather it is simply needing some tweaks. Nas appears to want to be the teacher for a generation of new hip hop stars, and maybe if they listen, hip hop will be the creative tour de force it once was in the 80s and early to mid 90s.