I'm as big a fan of tableau vivant as the next, but what the fuck is going on with the cover of Street's Disciple? The Last Supper?! Nas is a prophet, check, but the Jesus Christ of hip-hop? Then there's that poor sonuvabitch in the white. Didn't he read The DaVinci Code? Doesn't he know he's standing in for Mary Magdalene, a prostitute? Does he not understand how stupid he looks wearing a crucifix to The Last Supper?! This may be the most unintentionally hilarious "intentionally hilarious" album cover I have ever seen.

Nas practically needed two discs to back this sort of shit up, which is perhaps one reason why Street's Disciple does the dirty double, with the first disc (purportedly) for the street, and the second one (purportedly) for the home. Sounds gimmicky-- and yes, it's "sprawling," "massive," "has lots of filler," "should have been one disc," etc.-- but guess what: It's cocksure and it works. Relatively speaking, Nas is an old guy now. He doesn't rob banks; he has babies and marries Kelis. He doesn't narrate ghetto life in the glorious present; he reminisces and takes stabs at reform. He no longer needs to prove himself; he just has to flow. Throughout Street's Disciple, Nas simply sounds confident, which is the key to pulling off tracks so thematically un-gangsta: When your best-known lyric is "I never sleep 'cause sleep is the cousin of death," it can be tough to sell a line like, "It was my night to watch my little girl."

"This ain't no sucka for love shit/ This ain't no Huxtable kisses and hugs shit/ First night we fuck shit and don't call the next day," says Nas on "Getting Married". In Nas' hands, the institution becomes an avatar of badassness, much like faith becomes-- to faith's chagrin-- a vehicle for bravado on the Barry White-sampling "Nazareth Savage" ("I carried the cross to help you afford that plasma screen"), or as education advocacy oddly becomes the new thug ideal on "War" ("Tell my daughter try her hardest so the best schools'll take her in"). Nas hasn't mellowed on the mic; he just has different priorities-- and impressively, he doesn't eschew the present for the sake of his dated guns-drawn Queensbridge persona.

"Live Now" most powerfully sums up Nas' street-tough-to-hubby transformation. Here, Nas describes his death-- not by bullets and rap romanticism, but by old age: "My daughter at my bedside, respirator in me... Trying to say something/ The whole room'll quiet down just to hear my last words." Yet, in the same song, as if to counterbalance that tenderness, he anxiously rehashes his past: "Admit I did live it a little bit/ Sweet pickle dick, freaks licked on it/ Lips I dripped on it/ Sex I shot pearl necklaces on necks and tits." The rhyme feels forced, but maybe pointedly so. Nas realizes hip-hop doesn't like the sissy, and he's careful to balance such personal affairs with the requisite bravado.

Nas obviously has no trouble here, and for the most part, Chucky Thompson, Salaam Remi, and L.E.S. front the boards hard and hookless, keeping the focus on the lyrics. Check "Nazareth Savage" ("I squeeze nipples like pimples to get the pus, get it?"), the token girls-I-fucked track "Remember the Times" ("Used to run my bubble bath, tons of laughs, sexy chick/ Mad skills, she used to try to eat my excrement"), or the previously released "Thief's Theme" ("Bust a shell at the ground, pellets hit the crowd/ Nobody like a snitch, everybody shut they mouth"). The content is the same as before, but the vantage point is a rocking chair: Nas presents his past as been-there-done-that, an abridged backstory included as a contrast to his present affairs, and perhaps as a concession to some listeners: "I had to make a song, speakin' on my old life/ For the thieves who come out at night."

The streets are paved with rags-to-riches rappers, but few of them keep the dirt on their shoulder after MTV and the first cool mill. If the Nas of Illmatic was fighting to get Nas out of the ghetto, the Nas of Street's Disciple is fighting to get the ghetto out of the ghetto. The Q-Tip-produced "American Way" is politically untimely but fiery, with Nas bemoaning the black vote's impotence, and at one point calling Condoleeza Rice a "coon Uncle Tom fool." On the equally vicious "These Are Our Heroes", Nas sarcastically salutes "the coons on UPN9 and WB/ Who 'Yes, master' on TV," and calls out Tiger Woods, Cuba Gooding Jr., and "Mr. Goody Two-Shoes" Jay-Z for selfishness: "What you doin' for the hood?" The carps aren't novel-- as Nas points out, "It's trendy to be the conscious MC/ But next year, who knows what we'll see?"-- but carry unusual weight from the Queensbridge darling.

Street's Disciple shares in the missteps we can expect from both double-disc sets and Nas albums in general (a fair number of shitty beats, and the occasional bomb like "I'm the disciple of music!"), but there's a compelling record in here somewhere, and that album is easily Nas' best in years. For the past decade, he's tried to prove he can thug with the best; now unconcerned, he's caught a fresh breath. Street's Disciple is flawed, but Nas' second wave of confidence is one of the most exciting things to happen to hip-hop this year.