Magic 3

Magic 3 closes the run of albums Nas made with Hit-Boy, and its cover is spare. It is a black-and-white image with white lettering and the Nas logo, a monochrome design that strips away the reds and golds of the King's Disease series. Nas revealed the artwork on Instagram on 12 September 2023, along with the news that the album would drop on his birthday.

The timing carried the meaning. Magic 3 arrived on Nas's 50th birthday, in the same year hip-hop itself was celebrating fifty years, and it was presented as the last chapter of a partnership that had produced six albums in three years. The Magic records were the looser, faster side of that run, released with little warning, and their covers followed suit: quick, graphic and unfussy. A black-and-white cover suits a closing statement. It avoids any sense of a victory parade at the moment the series ends.

The partnership with Hit-Boy had begun during the pandemic, when, as Nas later recalled, "the world shut down, I wasn't leaving home, and Hit-Boy was telling me to come out." It had turned into one of the most productive late-career runs in rap. Magic 3 was released on 14 September 2023.