Written by Sean Ward | Photography by Philip Litevsky

After getting home from REMG’s presentation of Nas at the Kool Haus in Toronto, I got to wondering what it is that sets him so far apart from the competition.  Other acts with a catalogue stretching as far back as his are often working within their niche, catering to a stable fan base but mostly running off of the fumes of past glories.  But going to see Nas, even fifteen years into his performing career, does not feel like going to see a nostalgia act.  And it’s not just that Nas is one of a small handful of hip hop artists who are able to stay relevant over a long career.  There’s something else going on, something very special that makes Nas one of the most important and vital presences in the world of hip hop.  And this magical factor was on full display for this performance.

I invite the haters to present their case that Nas hasn’t done anything worthwhile since Illmatic.  And then with glee and enthusiasm I will ask them how, if that’s the case, Nas is able to rock a crowd as hard, as steadily, and as long as he did at the Kool Haus considering that almost the entirety of Illmatic was presented near the top of the night in a 20-minute medley.  It took not even a bar from each of those songs to set the whole crowd into a frenzy (anyone who accuses Toronto of being an apathetic audience, I wish you would have been at the Kool Haus to see this crowd).  You could literally feel the elation sweep the room when It Ain’t Hard To Tell piped in.

But like I said before, this show wasn’t about parading out the hits.  In fact, I caught myself thinking a couple of times that Nas must be nearly out of gas with so many of his signature tracks unleashed on the early side of the night.  But Nas has so god damn many classics, from mainstream hits to street anthems, that he is in a perfect situation: he can go off on an inaccessible tangent for a song or two to showcase to the heads how technically brilliant he is and just when it seems like the cats in the back are starting to daydream about their next beer, out comes another monster track that that reels ‘em right back in.

Jay-Z (and this is coming from a huge Jay-Z fan) is like The Rolling Stones: he packs ‘em in and yeah he’s still putting out records, but the fans want to hear him perform the classics.  Nas is more like David Bowie, switching up the style so fast and so often that you can barely keep up.  And when you thought he fell off, you quickly realize that he was actually creating the next trend all along.  With so many different styles and so many different personas over the course of his career, Nas has been so many things for so many people that the Nas that each person came to see was slightly different from the last.  And while everyone can agree to go bananas over The World is Yours or New York State of Mind (altered to T-Dot State of Mind for this performance), different groups of people had entirely different collections of songs to hold dear and get excited for. Toronto is usually a place for hip hop to show off the width and breadth of its influence.  This concert beautifully presented its depth with at least three generations of the hip hop audience representing, with the evening’s star attraction meaning something different to each of them.

Even hip hop fans disagree with me when I express my view that hip hop has barely tapped its potential.  Hip hop isn’t just a genre of music, it’s a whole artform unto itself.  Some people get cynical when they look at the current crop of flavors-of-the-month, seeing that as representative of what hip hop is.  But that stuff is disposable.  There’s nothing to feel but hope when you see someone like Nas demonstrating that the good stuff will prove itself timeless.