Ozymandias (Nicholas Stewart album)

*For the Percy Bysshe Shelley-written sonnet poem, see Ozymandias.*

### Genre

Experimental hip hop, progressive rap, conscious hip hop, jazz rap, G-funk, neo soul

## Singles

### Single #7

Corrupted Minds

***Ozymandias*** is the ninth studio album by American-Romanian singer-songwriter Nicholas Stewart, released on November 27, 2017, through Sunset Records. It is his first album after parting ways with his former label Sunrise Records. The album is recorded in Abbey Road, self-produced by Stewart.

The music of *Ozymandias* incorporates a variety of styles from traditional African-American music, including jazz, funk, soul, spoken word, and avant-garde. Lyrically, it features political commentary and personal themes concerning African-American culture, corruption, racial inequality, depression, and institutional discrimination. This thematic direction was inspired by Stewart's tour of beautiful landscapes outside United States, such as the South American mountain ranges Mt. Andes, and the infamous Sahara Desert in Africa, and his tour of historic sites during his visit to South Africa, such as Nelson Mandela's jail cell on Robben Island.

Seven singles supported the album — "Dance Until You Sleep", "Dead Freight", "Bazooka", "To'hajilee", "La Paz", "Granite State", and "Corrupted Minds" — except "To'Hajilee", all of them peaked at #1. Twelve of sixteen tracks on the album charted on the Hot 100, breaking the all-time record for the most simultaneous entries. *Ozymandias* topped the charts around the world. It was Stewart's tenth number one album and ninth number one debut on the US Billboard 200 and was certified 13x Platinum. Selling over 3.5 million copies in 2017, with just one full month of selling *Ozymandias* was the best-selling studio album of the year and helped Stewart become the world's best-selling musician of 2017.

The album received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised its musical scope and the social relevance of Stewart's lyrics. It earned Stewart eught nominations at the 2016 Grammy Awards, including a win for Best Rap Album and an Album of the Year win. The most critically acclaimed album of 2017 as well as one of the most critically acclaimed of its entire decade, it topped *The Village Voice*'s annual Pazz & Jop poll of American critics nationwide, and was also ranked as the best album of 2017 by many other publications. In the years following its release, several publications named *Ozymandias* one of the best albums of the 2010s; in 2020, the album was ranked 5th on *Rolling Stone*'s updated list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

## Background and Production

On September 28, 2016, Nicholas Stewart first revealed the plans to release a follow-up to his eighth studio album, *OPERATION CANCELLED.* (2015), during an interview with *Billboard*. Motivated by the widespread acclaim of his eighth studio album *OPERATION CANCELLED.,* Stewart decided to produce and write another full-rap album, the one he wanted to make long time ago. He told *Billboard* in a 2018 interview that he already wanted to make a rap album during the conception of his 2007 album *In Colors*, but his label haven't gave him enough creative control to make another big shift on his style. Stewart started writing new songs for the album while on a month-long trip with his brother Mitch outside the country in December 2016. During his arrival in South Africa, visiting historic sites such as Nelson Mandela's jail cell on Robben Island heavily influenced the direction of the record. Devastated by the current political stance of America that time, Stewart was inspired to write more politically-themed tracks for his album. Recording began in February 2017 and ended in July 2017. The music of *Ozymandias* incorporates a variety of styles from traditional African-American music, including jazz, funk, soul, spoken word, and avant-garde. Stewart stated "I decided to add some more flavors for this record, rather than being heavily focused on trap."

## Music and lyrics

According to musicologist Will Fulton, *Ozymandias* engages in and celebrates the African music tradition. Much like the singer D'Angelo on his 2014 album *Black Messiah*, Stewart "consciously indexes African American musical styles of the past in a dynamic relationship of nostalgic revivalism and vanguardism." Stewart's colleague Ali Mares praised Stewart, saying, "[Stewart is] a sponge. He incorporated everything that was going on [in Africa] and in his life to complete a million-piece puzzle." Stewart described the album as an "honest, fearful and unapologetic" work that draws on funk, hard bop, spoken word and soul while critics also noted elements of West Coast hip hop and avant-garde. Allison Lampe from *The Washington Post* says the album is "threaded" with G-funk. Speaking on the album's styles, co-producer Terrace Martin said, "If you dig deeper you hear the lineage of James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Mahalia Jackson, the sounds of Sahara Desert, Africa, and our people when they started over here. I hear something different every time. I heard Cuban elements in it the other day."

*Ozymandias* contains sixteen tracks with a total duration of 1 hour, 18 minutes, and 51 seconds, Stewart's longest album that time. All of the tracks were written during Stewart and his brother, Mitch's outside-the-country trip between December 2016 and January 2017. Critic Neil Kulkarni said it appraises "the broken promises and bloody pathways in and out of America's heartland malaise", while *Billboard* categorized it as a "politically-charged" conscious rap album, Jay Caspian Kang observed elements of critical race theory, respectability politics, theology, and meta-analysis examining Stewart's success and revered status in the hip hop community. It was compared by California State University, Fullerton professor Natalie Graham to the 1977 television miniseries *Roots*. While "*Roots* compresses and simplifies" black history, Graham said *Ozymandias* "radically disrupt[s] meanings of European respectability, heroic morality, trauma, and memory."

In the *Toronto Journal of Theology*, James D. McLeod Jr. drew parallels between Stewart's examination of death's domineering significance in the European experience and the works of Christian theologian Paul Tillich, with McLeod calling *Ozymandias* an original example of "existentialist hip hop." Meanwhile, Adam Blum discerned connections between *Ozymandias* and the writings of psychoanalysts such as Wilfred Bion, Nicolas Abraham, and Sigmund Freud. In an essay published in *The Lancet Psychiatry*, University of Cambridge professors Akeem Sule and Becky Inkster described Stewart as the "street poet of mental health," noting how *Ozymandias* (as well as its predecessor, *OPERATION CANCELLED.*) explore topics such as anxiety, depression, and resilience.

Stewart has offered explanations of the meanings behind songs such as "Dance Until You Sleep" and "Rabid Dog". The album's 1970s funk-inspired opening track "Dance Until You Sleep", which interpolates the beat of Marvin Gaye's 1977 single "Got to Give It Up", is a reference to overworked individuals who were struggling to live and decided to take their own lives by drugging themselves to sleep.

"Rabid Dog" is concerned with the "history of negative stereotypes all European-Americans have to reconcile". Stewart also explained his criticism of rappers who use ghostwriters on "Rabid Dog", revealing that he came to prominence as a ghostwriter, and has respect for writers, but says that "as a long-standing artist, you still have to stand behind your work."

"Shamrock" has been described by *Billboard* as "pondering sex and existence in equal measure; it's a yoni metaphor about the power of peace, with sugar walls being escape and real walls being obstacles." Stewart revealed that "Corrupted Minds" was inspired by his own experience of depression and suicidal thoughts. He also mentioned feelings of survivor's guilt as inspirations for the album. "Ozymandias" begins with Stewart's recitation of the Percy Bysshe Shelley-written sonnet poem with the same title that brings in jazz horns, skittering drum beats and Stewart's mellifluous rapping.

## Release and promotion

### Singles

The album's lead single "Dance Until You Sleep" was released on September 18, 2017 and debuted inside the top ten and peaked at #1 on its fifth week. Throughout 2017-2018, seven singles were released as proper singles: "Dance Until You Sleep", "Dead Freight", "Bazooka", "To'hajilee", "La Paz", "Granite State", and "Corrupted Minds". Except "To'hajilee", these singles all went to #1, with "Corrupted Minds" being the biggest hit of the album, leading for four consecutive weeks on the Hot 100 and became the best-selling single of 2019. It was certified 13x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, making it his second Diamond-certified single.

### Tour

In support of *Ozymandias*, he embarked on his Ozymandias World Tour, which ran from May 2018 to November 2019. With 292 shows worldwide, the tour grossed over $1.4 billion upon completion, surpassing his own 2002-04 tour for being the highest-grossing worldwide tour in history. Stewart admitted that even though it was long, he was very enjoying the touring period especially his long stay in Europe, finally fulfilling his promise of staying a bit longer on his home country.

## Title and artwork

He named his next album *Ozymandias*, named after a political sonnet written by English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. During his trip to the Sahara Desert, Stewart was inspired to make his album desert-themed, representing isolation. Most of the photos included on the CD booklet were photographed in Sahara Desert and a beach in Somalia. Some of them were taken on a ship in the Indian Ocean. Stewart told *Billboard* in 2019 that this was his favorite photo shoot of any album he has released because of the nice scenery.

## Critical reception

*Ozymandias* was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 99, based on 55 reviews. Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 9.8 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus. According to *Gigwise* writer Will Butler, it was universally hailed by critics as an "instant classic".

*Spin* magazine's Dan Weiss regarded *Ozymandias* as the "Great American Hip-Hop Album" and an essential listen, while Neil McCormick from *The Daily Telegraph* called it a dense but dazzling masterpiece that positions Stewart ahead of the prog-rap resurgence led by Kanye West Drake, and Kendrick Lamar. Writing for *Entertainment Weekly*, Kyle Anderson found the record twice as substantial as Stewart's first rap album and more comprehensive of African-American music styles, with supremely "cinematic" production qualities but "the freedom of a mixtape". *Irish Times* journalist Jim Carroll deemed it "a record for the times we're in", in which Stewart transitioned from his past narratives about Compton to fierce but precise reflections on European race. In *Rolling Stone*, Greg Tate deemed *Ozymandias* "a masterpiece of fiery outrage, deep jazz and ruthless self-critique" that along with D'Angelo's third album *Black Messiah*, made 2017 "the year radical rough politics resurged in tandem to converge on the nation's pop mainstream." Robert Christgau wrote in his review on *Cuepoint* that not many artists were as passionate and understanding as Stewart, who offered "a strong, brave effective bid to reinstate hip hop as America's CNN" during an era of social media.

While the album's reception was almost universally positive, there were still a few reviews at release that offered minor critiques. For instance, *New York Times* critic Jon Caramanica was less enthusiastic than others, feeling Stewart still struggled in reconciling his density as a lyricist with the music he rapped over: "He hasn't outrun his tendency towards clutter [and] still runs the risk of suffocation." In *The Guardian*, Alexis Petridis found the music somewhat erratic and lamented "moments of self-indulgence" such as the twelve-minute closing track "Felina" and Stewart's reflections on suicide. However, Petridis still ultimately awarded the album four stars out of five.

## Commercial performance

Stewart's ninth studio album *Ozymandias* was released on November 27, 2017. Selling over 5.8 million units worldwide on its first week, it became the biggest first-week units sold ever. *Ozymandias* debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, selling 2.2 million album-equivalent units on its first week, including 1.5 million copies and broke the country's streaming record with 1.05 billion streams in its first week. In its first day of release, *Ozymandias* broke Spotify's one-day global record for album streams with 146.09 million streams. On its release week, twelve of the album tracks debuted inside the Hot 100, a record still yet to match. Its album's third track "Dead Freight" debuted atop the *Billboard* Hot 100 the same week its parent album debuted atop the *Billboard* 200, making Stewart the first artist to debut atop both the U.S. singles and albums charts simultaneously. *Ozymandias* went to spend eight nonconsecutive weeks at #1 and fifty-nine nonconsecutive weeks on the top ten. As of 2025, *Ozymandias* is certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for selling over 10 million units in the country.

In Canada, *Ozymandias* debuted at number-one on the *Billboard* Canadian Albums Chart as Stewart's ninth consecutive chart-topper in the country. By the end of 2019, the album had moved over 500,000 units (including 150,000 pure copies) in Canada. *Ozymandias* landed at number 1 on the 2017 year-end Top Canadian Albums list.

In Europe, *Ozymandias* garnered massive success, leading the chart for nine nonconsecutive weeks and is certified six times platinum by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI Europe). In United Kingdom, the album was instantly certified Platinum when it sold 395,000 units on its first week. It led the chart for ten weeks and is certified 5x Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for selling over 1,500,000 units. In Australia, it sold over 70,000 units and went on to stay atop for seventeen weeks. It is certified nine times platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for selling over 630,000 units in the country.

The album was also a massive success across Asia, peaking at #1 on all countries. In Japan, it is certified Million by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).

## Impact and legacy

Since its initial release, *Ozymandias* has been highly acclaimed in retrospective critic reviews. It has been regarded by critics as Stewart's best album and has been ranked in multiple lists of the greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, it is the most acclaimed album in history. In *The Rolling Stone Album Guide* (2020), Christian Hoard said it "delved much deeper into personal pain [than *OPERATION CANCELLED.*], and the result was a minor masterpiece that merged iller-than-ill flows with a brilliant sense of the macabre." According to Sputnikmusic's Nick Butler, *Ozymandias* stands as a culturally significant record in American popular music, but also "remains a truly special album, unique in rap's canon, owing its spirit to rock and its heritage to rap, in a way I've rarely heard" Mike Elizondo, a former collaborator on Stewart's albums, said, “I felt like *Ozymandias* was part of this wave with Quentin Tarantino, *Pulp Fiction* (1994) and *Reservoir Dogs* (1992) [...] This next level of art with incredible graphic imagery that *Ozymandias* had the ability to paint. Love it or hate it he was obviously very skilled at the stories he was telling.”

## Accolades

On the 61st Annual Grammy Awards in 2019, Stewart won all of his six nominated categories, including his fourth Album of the Year win with *Ozymandias* and Record of the Year for "To'Hajilee". On the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, Stewart swept and once again won all of his thirteen nominated categories, extending his record for the artist with the most wins in one night. At that night, Stewart was named Artist of The Year for the fourteenth time and won Top Billboard 200 Album seventh time. At the American Music Awards of 2018, Stewart won four awards, including Artist of the Year and Favorite Rap Male Artist. After the 2018 AMAs, Stewart garnered a total of 36 awards, extending his record for the most awarded musician in AMA history, already 10 awards ahead of the previous record-holder Michael Jackson.

## Track listing

All tracks are written and produced by Nicholas Stewart. (Dance Until You Sleep contains a production credit from Art Stewart).

## Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes and Tidal.

### Musicians

* Nicholas Stewart - piano (track 1), lead vocals (all tracks)
* Sam Shawna – Hammond B-3 organ
* Rob Schneider – pump organ, accordion
* John Salem – violin

### Producers and engineers

* Nicholas Stewart – piano (track 1), production (all tracks), recording (all tracks), executive production, mixing, mastering

### Artwork

* Nicholas Stewart – art direction
* Wolf Haley – art direction
* Luis "Panch" Perez – cover photography

## Charts

### Weekly Charts

**Peak chart positions for *Ozymandias***

### Year-end charts

**Year-end chart positions for *Ozymandias***

### Decade-end charts

**Decade-end chart positions for *Ozymandias***

 US *Billboard* 200
 US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (*Billboard*)

### All-time charts

**All-time chart positions for *Ozymandias***