Nas — Illmatic

Time for today’s 🐐album. In many ways, Illmatic is peerless. In it, the then 20-year-old Nas is a storyteller without equal, showing you through a clear window pastiches of a world you would have never otherwise seen. He does this against the backdrop of the best work of hip-hop’s best producers: DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, Q-Tip (from ATCQ), and L.E.S. It’s a veritable who’s who of the greatest beatmakers of the east coast punctuating Nas’s images of urban decay with spare jazz-influenced boom-bap beats. Consequently, when it came out, Illmatic provided a blueprint for what spare, lyrical hardcore hip-hop could sound like vis-a-vis the synthy, richly layered sound of Dre-inspired west-coast hip-hop.

The enviable roster of producers on Illmatic is no coincidence; the album was hype before hype was hype. In the two years preceding its release, Nas had become one of the New York underground’s most sought after MCs. After hearing him in ciphers and on tape, the city’s best producers were in a race to make beats for the teenage rapper’s upcoming album; the labels were in a race to sign him. Instead of settling for a single producer, he assembled a dream team. 

But hip-hop is producer plus mc, not in that order. Lyrically, Illmatic’s verses are written with a poet’s eye for flow, rich in multisyllabic rhymes, internal rhymes, enjambment and other literary techniques that would change the way rappers rap overnight (see Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt as evidence, comparing its rhymes with the rhymes on the pre-Illmatic songs like The Originators, especially on Dead Presidents II, which also samples The World Is Yours from this album). A strange consequence of this is Nas lecturing at Harvard and Princeton and speaking with their professors about the verses of songs like Life’s A Bitch. 

Here what it’s like going through this album. First, you start with Genesis, one of the greatest intros in hip-hop, a short track introducing Nas’ voice talking about his ideas about artistic integrity and the urban dystopia of his day-to-day life.

This leads quickly into track 2, your introduction to Nas rapping, NY State Of Mind, a modern-day classic. Produced by DJ Premier, who picks vaporous samples from smoky jazz tracks to form the spine of the song, it sets the tone for the album: sparse instrumentation, organic boom-bap beats, but most importantly, all the aural space in the world for a listener to zoom in on Nas’ complex lyricism. As a sampler, this is what you hear when it starts: Rappers I monkey flip 'em with the funky rhythm I be kickin'/ Musician, inflictin' composition, of pain / I'm like Scarface sniffin' cocaine / Holdin' a M16, see with the pen I'm extreme.

After the lyrical onslaught of NY State Of Mind is Life’s A Bitch whose smooth trumpet outro is played by Nas’s dad Olu Dara. Track 4 is The World Is Yours, produced by Pete Rock. By this point, you’re convinced Nas is the king not only of snaking rhymes, but also of the simple, catchy prechorus. On this track, the hook is I'm out for presidents to represent me / I’m out for dead presidents to represent me. Just like on NY State Of Mind it’s the unforgettable sleep is the cousin of death. Track 5 is Halftime, one of the tracks that made Nas big before this album. Two years prior to the release of Illmatic, Nas' debut single “Halftime” was released in 1992 from the Zebrahead soundtrack. The jazzy boom bap track was produced by Large Professor. On the track, the king of the pre-chorus strikes again: Nas, why did you do it? / You know you got the mad-phat fluid when you rhyme / It's halftime. What’s more, he’s also got you convinced he’s the king of the post-chorus. It's like that, you know it's like that / I got it hemmed, now you never get the mic back / When I attack, there ain't a army that could strike back / So I react, never calmly on a hype track. ooooooooooooooo!!!

On the other side of the Premier-produced Memory Lane (Sittin’ in da Park) is another highlight of the album, One Love, produced by ATCQ’s Q-Tip, a man whose producing abilities are often overshadowed by his otherworldly lyrical abilities. Nas is a narrative genius, detailing the regrets of a man in prison over a smooth organ-jazz sample. After One Time 4 Your Mind and the brilliantly produced Represent (DJ Premier again; the stand-out among this album’s roster of producers), you come at last to the album closer, its lead single, It Ain’t Hard To Tell. One of the great album closers in popular music, it neatly sums up every thesis the album presents.