Nas released King’s Disease III on November 11, 2022, through Mass Appeal Records, and the album turns four today. This Nas King’s Disease III album revisited look starts with the original release date stated plainly: Friday, November 11, 2022, the day the third chapter of his Hit-Boy trilogy arrived, produced and executive produced by Nas and Hit-Boy, 17 tracks in 51 minutes and 52 seconds, with no billed guest features at all.
The album had been promised almost a year earlier. Nas surprise released Magic on Christmas Eve 2021, and on its song Ugly he confirmed the third instalment was already in the works, in the line quoted in the album’s reference page: “KD3 on the way, this just to feed the buzz.” Hit-Boy announced the same day that work had begun. Nas confirmed the date on October 18, 2022, with a promotional poster on his social media, and the tracklist followed on November 9, two days before release.
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King’s Disease III By The Numbers
The chart debut carried a piece of history. The album opened at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 with 29,000 album equivalent units in its first week, including 8,500 pure album sales and 26.47 million on demand streams of its songs, per Billboard’s chart report. That made it Nas’ 16th top ten album on the chart, tying him with Jay-Z for the most top ten albums among rap artists at the time. It also reached No. 4 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, No. 29 on the Canadian Albums chart and No. 2 on the UK Hip Hop and R&B Albums chart. A solo rap album with no features, made by a 49 year old artist nearly three decades after his debut, does not usually open in the top ten. This one did, as the third top ten in a three year run that had already delivered a Grammy for the first King’s Disease.
Seventeen Tracks, One Producer, No Features
Hit-Boy produced every track, with Jansport J joining on WTF SMH and C3 Official on Once a Man, Twice a Child. The sequence runs Ghetto Reporter, Legit, Thun, Michael & Quincy, 30, Hood2Hood, Recession Proof, Reminisce, Serious Interlude, I’m on Fire, WTF SMH, Once a Man, Twice a Child, Get Light, First Time, Beef, Don’t Shoot, and the bonus closer Til My Last Breath. The only outside voice on the whole record is an uncredited one: Mario sings background vocals on Serious Interlude. Everything else is Nas, which is the point of the exercise. The samples do the guest work instead: Reminisce rides Mary J. Blige’s You Remind Me, Thun samples Boogie Down Productions’ The Bridge Is Over, Get Light interpolates The Notorious B.I.G.’s Party and Bullshit, and Beef samples Nas’ own N.Y. State of Mind, the artist quoting his youngest self inside his oldest form.
Michael & Quincy became the album’s first visual, a tribute to Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones as the model artist and producer partnership, directed by Sarah McColgan, with Nas and Hit-Boy both on screen. Watch it here:
What The Critics Heard
The reviews made it the best received chapter of the trilogy. At Metacritic the album holds a score of 88 out of 100 from eleven reviews, classed as universal acclaim. AllMusic wrote that the work is “at once loose and deeply complex, effortless in its incisiveness yet still dazzling at its peaks,” adding that the three bullions on the cover say it best, that the duo keep producing gold. Clash called it “a fantastically consistent, perpetually illuminating full-length” that shows Nas retaining a hunger his peers have lost, and NME concluded that the record put the seal on a strong trilogy proving that, three decades in, he remained a force to be reckoned with. The industry agreed a year later: at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, King’s Disease III was nominated for Best Rap Album.
Four Years On
The trilogy did not end the run. Magic 2 and Magic 3 followed in 2023, extending the Nas and Hit-Boy partnership to six albums in four years, a late career volume matched by very few artists in the genre’s history. Four years after its release, King’s Disease III stands as the trilogy’s peak and its cleanest statement: one voice, one producer, no features, a top ten debut, a Grammy nomination and the best review scores of the three. Play Michael & Quincy for the partnership, Reminisce for the warmth and Once a Man, Twice a Child for the writing. The third chapter is the one the whole second act turns on.
