The album incorporates a mix of hardcore hip hop and storytelling, with themes predominantly based on Nas' reflections on fame, the rap industry, urban life in America and his childhood in Queensbridge.

Other leaked songs include Find Ya Wealth (later on QB's Finest), U Gotta Love It (later on The Lost Tapes), My Worst Enemy, Amongst Kings and The Rise & Fall.

An official two-LP pressing of the "Autobiography" version (utilizing the 1998 leak tracklisting) was released by Columbia/Legacy/Sony for Record Store Day Black Friday on November 24, 2023.

Famed photographer Danny Hastings has shot iconic cover images for Big Pun’s Capital Punishment and Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, but his album art shoot for I Am... almost ended in disaster.

[13] Jeff Stark of Salon noted "distinct identities" for each song and wrote that it does not sound "coherent", but "as if it belongs to a scattershot demographic of subway riders".

[14] Franklin Soults of The Village Voice viewed that its music attempts to meet "halfway" with consumer demographics, noting that Nas' "most salient talent is finding and exploiting the middle ground".

[15] In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau gave I Am... a B− rating and named it "dud of the month",[7] indicating "a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought".

[7] Craig Seymour of The Washington Post attributed its thematic inconsistency to the replacement of tracks that leaked to the Internet prior to the album's release, concluding that "Anyone with a good Web connection might wonder what a profound personal opus 'I Am' could have been".

[18] Chicago Sun-Times writer Rebecca Little gave the album two-a-and-half out of four stars and stated, "if you get past the torrent of [profanity] and a few terms referring to women as dogs and garden tools, [...] 'I Am' is a notable effort", adding that "The finer moments lie in the rapper's trademark ability to spin a compelling tale about ghetto life".

[11] Christopher John Farley of Time complimented Nas' lyrics and themes and the album's musical approach, noting "grander, more aggressive, more cinematic" songs.

[19] Entertainment Weekly's Tom Sinclair compared the album to "a bona fide hip-hopera", noting string and keyboard-laden songs and "universal themes".

[8] Los Angeles Times writer Soren Baker commended Nas for "adroitly balancing hard-core subject matter with production that should easily find its way onto urban radio".

[9] Steve Jones of USA Today gave it four out of four stars and complimented Nas' "dense and deft rhymes" and "nimble, cinematic descriptions", writing that the album "nestles nicely between the underground grittiness of 1994's Illmatic and the high gloss of 1996's It Was Written".

II" "Hate Me Now" "Small World" "We Will Survive" "Dr. Knockboot" "You Won't See Me Tonight" "Life Is What You Make It" "Big Things" "Pray" "Nas Is Like"