For all of the experimentation, though, he’s made sure to include plenty of the original recipe: The Queensbridge hero bars up over modern-day boom bap on “Lost Freestyle”, “The Art of It” and “Highly Favored”, produced by Statik Selektah, Pete Rock, and RZA, respectively. LT 2 is in essence a true version of the concept of Lost Tapes. It is actually made of songs that were cut from previous albums such as Hip Hop is Dead, Untitled, Life Is Good and from about a year and a half ago. It is the reason the original Lost Tapes was such a well produced and cohesive piece of work. Though working with familiar collaborators, he’s clearly pushed himself artistically across these selections, rapping over kaleidoscopic synths on the DJ Toomp-produced “Queens Wolf", keeping pace with a fluttering jazz melody on Eddie Cole’s “Jarreau of Rap” and addressing his historically contentious relationship with the mother of his daughter and the infamous JAY-Z beef on the No I.D.-helmed “Beautiful Life”. Three years later Nas released those songs on the Lost Tapes. The production line-up-which features Kanye, Pharrell, Swizz Beatz and The Alchemist, among others-is not unlike one Nas might choose if he were creating an entirely new album from scratch. The recordings herein originate from the sessions that gave us Hip Hop Is Dead (2006), Untitled (2008), Life Is Good (2012) and the Kanye West-produced Nasir (2018). As labels would become better at protecting music (Nas switched from Columbia to Def Jam and then to his very own Mass Appeal in the time after), the majority of the songs on The Lost Tapes 2 are new at first listen to even the most dedicated God’s Son disciples.
The premise of the original The Lost Tapes, released in 2002, is that it was an unearthing of songs never officially released-they'd only been available in low-quality versions via mixtapes and leaked audio files since at least the time of 1999’s I Am.
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