IWW is a classic. BUT, It's retroactive love that it receives is a classic example of Nas stan doublestandardery, because it's pretty much Nas dickriding Rae and Ghost's style w/ the mafioso shit. this is undeniable. He wasn't running shit, only being a follower.
Nas was doing mafioso shit on Illmatic (NY State of Mind) and The Infamous. He's from Queens. Accusing him of jacking mafioso shit would be like accusing Dipset of biting Mase's super flossy ignorant shit; they're from Harlem, that's what Harlem still does to this day (ASAP).
But I will say this: IWW is like a mainstream version of Cuban Linx. There's a skit before I Gave You Power that is almost exactly like the skit on the Can't It Be So Simple remix, about getting shot and throwing your gun away before the cops arrive.
And on the classic status.. It got a 4.5 in The Source, it's not like people hated the album upon release outside of stuck in the 80s ninjas. If we want to talk about retroactive praise we can discuss Reasonable Doubt being largely forgotten in 1996 thanks to IWW, and being arguably the weakest noteworthy mafioso album of that era.
