nas - illmatic

Sam Burbank

In Chronicles, Volume One, Bob Dylan recognized that his contemporaries on the hip hop scene weren’t messing around, they voiced the serious poetry of an under spoken people. Dylan heard in those voices the same believability that gave his own voice its cutting edge. It’s like listening to a poetic reading by someone who truly feels it and lives it. That’s what hits you first with Nas – raw believability. 

For those that don’t know him, his debut album Illmatic is the place to start. Those that do have any knowledge of hip hop culture beyond the names Tupac and Biggie will know that the dark street poetry of Nas’s debut album was a turning point for the 90’s East-West conflict, and set a bar for hip hop lyricism that still towers over most of the scene nearly two decades later.

You don’t need to go past the iconic album art and the opening track “The Genesis” to get a feel for Nas’s project and what he wants us to know about him. The album art is rumored to be inspired by the art for a 70’s jazz album by the Howard Hanger Trio. It features a picture of Nas as a boy taken by his father, Olu Dara, an avant-garde jazz musician, who played on the track “Life’s a Bitch.” The shot is superimposed over a another of the Queensbridge projects, where Nas’s experiences inspired this poignant delivery on themes of poverty and rivalry

“The Genesis” opens with a vocal sample from Wild Style, a film famous for being one of the first ever about hip hop and street culture. “There ain’t nothing out here for you” claims the man, to the backdrop of street ambience and samples of Grand Wizard Theodore’s “Subway Theme.” The response, which might as well have come from the mouth of Nas himself, “Yes there is, this.” 

From the first line professing that he’s straight out of the “dungeons of rap” to the final “Nas’s raps should be locked in a cell,” everything in between is dangerous enough to get locked up and valuable enough to be kept there and remembered. You have to hear it to understand – nobody does “this” like Nas.