down" in crime. Christian Hoard of Rolling Stone considers "Get Down" to be the best song on God's Son, as does columnist Serena Kim of Vibe. The single was not a significant commercial success, and it failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Critical reception God's Son was released to acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 81, based on 18 reviews. AllMusic and IGN place it below Illmatic and Stillmatic. Despite calling the production "lukewarm", Pitchfork's Sam Chennault lauded Nas' verbal ability, describing him as "technically stunning" as an emcee, as well as "rhythmically versatile and intellectually astute." Chennault also compared God's Son to Nas' debut album, writing that the former has more emotional depth than Illmatic, and stating "In many ways, God's Son is lyrically superior to Illmatic. Nas has created an album that is at once mournful and resilient, street-savvy and academic." Serena Kim of Vibe gave the album a 4 out of 5 disc-rating and stated "He's disarmingly self-deprecating here, and gives us a rare look into his artistic process". Ethan Brown of New York praised Nas' lyricism and found its musically significant, stating: In a mixed review, Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Village Voice criticized Nas for abandoning his role as "rap's foremost observer" for "the ballad of the learned thug" and stated, "Nas has rendered himself mediocre. At his worst, he becomes a Tupac clone content to contemplate hackneyed hip-hop maxims, like whether there is a heaven for gangsters (see 'Thugz Mansion N.Y.'). A more apt question is whether there is a heaven for a cliché, because several cuts on God's Son are begging for funerals." Spin commented that "Nas' heart is in the right place, but his mind is somewhere else entirely", adding that God's Son follows what "we were really waiting for", The Lost Tapes. Stylus Magazine editor Brett Berliner stated, "Honestly, if Nas had chosen to drop about 4 tracks and cut it down to Illmatics 10, it would be in the class of Stillmatic, and we’d be talking about it as Nas’ 4th classic." However, Berliner viewed that Nas' performance makes up for the album's flaws, commenting that "Nas stays poignant, clever and intelligent, and, in doing so, adds an extra incentive to purchase his album: simply put, he's the best