On July 18, 2023, after almost a week of teasing via his Instagram,[2][3] Nas announced the album, revealing the title and artwork.

[citation needed] Magic 2 was met with mostly positive praise from critics upon its release.

[4] Clash's Robin Murray called the album "a bravura feast of word play combined to some of the most effective beats of his career" and found that Nas "tak[es] the energy of his 90s recordings into a fresh era".

[7] Dylan Green of Pitchfork described Magic 2 as "a low-stakes mid-career rap album to show that one of the genre's icons is still in decent fighting shape", writing that some of Nas's lines feel "forced, like he's cycling through Urban Dictionary tabs open on a laptop in the booth".

[11] Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Paul Simpson concluded that, " While not all of Magic 2 is this strong, there are several moments like this one ["One Mic, One Gun"] that can contend with the best of the King's Disease material.