Nas — Street's Disciple

With sparring partner Jay-Z supposedly out of the game, it's the perfect time for Nasir Jones to make the kind of big comeback fans have been hoping for since 1996's It Was Written. "Big" is the key word here — the double-disc Street's Disciple is a sprawling, epic offering, aiming to win Nas back the hip-hop crown he earned with debut Illmatic.

Thankfully, Nas' self-indulgence now stops at his output; his reinvigorated rhymes take materialism, greed and "the respectable Negro" to task, and most are delivered over the kind of raw, spare beats rarely seen in commercial hip-hop anymore. The second disc could use some heavy editing, but the first leaves no question as to Nas' continued relevance.