After being caught reviewing the new Black Crowes album without reviewer David Peisner actually possessing a copy of said album and claiming the bogus critique as an “educated-guess preview,” Maxim has gone one better and awarded another mediocre review to an album that doesn’t actually exist yet. Last we heard, Nas’ Title That Certain Bloggers Take Great Delight In Printing Whenever Possible had been delayed until late spring. Turns out the rapper has possibly yet to even deliver the tapes to Def Jam; Nas tells the New York Post that he’s “finishing the album now” and talking up a new April 22 release date. Perhaps in deference to those long magazine lead times, the educated guessers at Maxim went ahead and gave Nas’ unfinished album 2 1/2 circles (out of a perfect five). That’s the same score that so incensed the Crowes, but Nas is much more sanguine about the whole affair.
Maxim has since apologized for the premature review, but Nas doesn’t care. “I’d prefer [a review from] Playboy,” the rapper said. “That kind of stuff doesn’t reach my radar or effect anybody around me. I don’t know what a music rating from Maxim is . . . I don’t know what it even means really.”
So wait, he’s not worried about a 75-ish word blurb-icle in a glossy spank rag deterring its flighty readership from picking up an album from an artist with a compact but committed fanbase, an album that will likely be reviewed in somewhat greater depth closer to its actual release date by publications with an actual connection to that artist’s culture and at least the appearance of an interest in music that goes beyond back-of-book space-filler? But if that half-filled circle had been fully filled it might have easily sent two or three more people to iTunes to buy an unfinished album!
JumpingThe Gun [NY Post]
somebody needs to make a “Maxim gave me 2 1/2 stars” t-shirt….
Like I said before, the only cultural impact this album will have is the press surrounding its release. Isn’t it Nas who claimed Hip Hop is dead? If that’s the case, why is he still trying!?
$20 says everyone who “wouldn’t be caught dead reading that piece of shit” has no idea whether it’s actually good or bad because they’ve, you know, never read it. (Like me!)
@HONEYBFLY: Maybe it won’t be a hip hop album, then. Maybe it’ll be classical.
Also, Maxim’s Sept 2008 issue is mediocre at best.
that magazine is dribble-piss. i wouldn’t even use it to line my
rabbit’s litterpans with for fear they would be offended by it’s
mediocre writing and lack of necessity in the world.
Those are some discerning rabbits.
I can’t even read that magazine on the crapper anymore, unless of course I’m in desperation and out of t.p.
I’d be okay using it line my rats’ cage, but only because they’re hipster bitches who would think reading it (and subsequently defecating on it) is ironic and fun.
Actually…
So I guess he won’t be pissed when “Celebratard Wank Mag” and “Body Spray Aficionado” dis his new one for not being as good as “Illmatic”?
Nasir Jones, you are all right in my book, sir.
And good lord (and aaamen, SuperUnison), can we give the guy a break? Can’t a Nas album be great without constantly being compared to Ilmmatic?
I don’t see why people are all up in arms about him naming the album, Tigger anyway. Are A.A. Milne’s lawyers really that hardass?
Does anybody remember when SPIN ran Klosterman’s “Chinese Democracy” review two years ago as an April Fool’s gag? I think that was Sia Michel’s final issue. Anyway, perhaps these Maxim blurbs are just elaborate, not remotely clever April Fool’s jokes. Or publicity stunts.
Based on Nas’s output as of the past few years, I’d probably give it even less than two and a half stars, honestly.
And this coming from a Nas fan.