yeah, i was disappointed with the stillmatic cover...
...i take that back after reading this.
When the Stillmatic freestyle dropped in summer of 2001, not only was everyone charged up by the Jigga diss, but also by a certain profecy by the man who used to call himself Nastradamus... "On my next albums/there'll be a difficult test inside the cover for the mind's optics"... The first four of Nas's albums were interconnected "From boy to man to king to prophet", "Since Illmatic It Was Written I Am Nastradamus"... as are Stillmatic, God Son and Nastalgic/Nas Writes No More/whateverthefuckhe'sgonnacallthenext one...
See it's like this... (this shit has been varified by Nas)... (peep the bonus footage on the God Son disc, and the Nas MSN chat from 2001)... Bare in mind that Nas is very religous, and also very clever... The story of Noah is the inspiration... I'll paraphrase the story(this is from memory so bare with my errors)...
Men became wicked, so to punish them God sent a huge flood to Earth... but to give the human species(and all the other species on the planet) a second chance.. God allowed the holy man Noah and his wife to construct an arc to survive the storm and to bring two of every animal on the ship... every day Noah sent out a dove to search for dry land... each day the dove returned without anything... finally the dove came about with an olive branch and Noah knew there was once again dry land...
Ok.. now... the Stillmatic cover represents the evil of man before the flood... The ice and the flashy orange clothes show the greed of rappers and man in general, Nas (who always calls himself God Son, ie Jesus, ie the one who suffered for all man's sins) is wearing the ice to show that he's taking on all the wrongs comitted by mankind... New York in the back ground represents the sins of man on a broader level... (ie 9/11 and all the political messages on Stillmatic's songs)... The pigeon is a ghetto dove...
Cut to the God Son cover... the flood has come and washed away NYC, and all the ice and flashy clothes from Nas... ie it's washed away all sin... (like the great flood in Noah's day...) The sole piece of jewelery worn by Nas is the Jesus piece, representing his Noah/Christ status and his transformation from iced out thug to holy man... On the back of the album it has Nas with two doves on his palms... notice they have no olive branches... the flood is still in effect... what is the flood... I'm guessing Nas is saying that it's his music, his message... originally God Son was gonna be a diss to all rappers and supposedly an end to their career (ie **** Hot)... but instead Nas chose to make it an education experience for the youth (ie I Can), washing way future sin....
Now for the third album... The flood will have receeded, and there will be a dove with an olive branch in it's mouth... What will be in the floods wake is unclear (Nas says in the God Son bonus footage we'll all have to wait and see)... Hit me back with your thoughts...
