Magic 3 Review: Nas and Hit-Boy Close Their Six-Album Run on a High Note

Magic 3 closes out a six-album run between Nas and Hit-Boy, and it plays like a victory lap that still wants to prove something. Fifteen tracks, 45 minutes, no guest verses to split focus — just two artists who know each other’s rhythms finishing what they started. The album arrived in 2023, three years after the pair first teamed up, and it holds up as a strong capstone to that partnership.

Magic 3 In Numbers

• Album: Magic 3, Nas (2023)
• Tracks: 15
• Running time: 45 minutes
• Metacritic: 86/100
• AllMusic: 4.5/5

Fever Through Never Die

The album opens fast. Fever runs 2:47 and doesn’t waste a second of it, and TSK keeps the pace with tight, clipped verses over Hit-Boy’s drums. Superhero Status is where the record first shows its teeth — reviewers singled it out, and the energy on it is undeniable. I Love This Feeling follows and earns its own praise, a warmer cut that still hits hard. No Tears and Never Die close this stretch, both flagged as highlights, and together they make the first six tracks the strongest run on the album.

Pretty Young Girl slows things down at 2:20, the shortest track on the record, and it’s a breather rather than a statement. Based on True Events and its follow-up, Based on True Events, Pt. 2, work best back to back — the second part builds on what the first one sets up.

Sitting With My Thoughts Through Speechless, Pt. 2

Sitting With My Thoughts is reflective without dragging. Blue Bentley is a minor side trip, pleasant but easy to forget next to the tracks around it. Jodeci Member is the high point of the record’s back half — one of the tracks reviewers kept coming back to, and it earns that attention with a hook that sticks. Speechless, Pt. 2 closes out the run of singled-out tracks, proof that Hit-Boy’s production hasn’t lost any edge this late in the album.

Japanese Soul Bar is a smaller moment, easy to miss on a first listen. Then 1-800-Nas&Hit runs 4:37, the longest track by a wide margin, and it plays like the album’s closing statement rather than a new idea.

The strongest stretches of the album, in order:

1. Fever through Never Die — the opening run, six tracks deep, with no weak link
2. Jodeci Member and Speechless, Pt. 2 — the high point of the back half
3. Based on True Events and its Pt. 2 — a strong middle pairing
4. The closing run from Blue Bentley to 1-800-Nas&Hit — steady but the least essential

Clash called it possibly “Nas and Hit-Boy’s finest hour together,” and said “the closure of this chapter allows us to analysis their relationship, but you’re still left yearning for more.” That line captures the pull running through the whole record. AllMusic placed the album alongside King’s Disease III and Magic at what it called the peak of this long run together, and praised it in strong terms.

Not every review agreed.

One review pushed back, saying the album is not the big finish some fans were hoping for. That’s a fair point. The back half doesn’t hit as hard as the front, and a few tracks feel more like filler than statements in their own right. At 15 tracks, the album does run long in stretches — Blue Bentley and Japanese Soul Bar could have been trimmed without losing anything important.

But the complaints are about scale, not quality. Nothing here is bad. The worst that can be said of Magic 3 is that it doesn’t change what Nas and Hit-Boy built over five earlier albums together — it confirms it. Nas sounds locked in throughout, especially on Superhero Status and Jodeci Member, and Hit-Boy’s production never coasts, even on the album’s quieter tracks.

Magic 3 isn’t the biggest swing in this three-album set, but it might be the most steady. It closes a run that’s produced some of the most praised music of the past few years, and it does so with only a couple of tracks that feel like filler. The set of three albums ends on a high note, even if it’s not the highest one.

album review · hip hop · Hit-Boy · Magic 3 · Nas