Smith's Hits: Illmatic
“Illmatic” is NY rapper Nas’ first album. It came out in 1994, at the height of the Golden Era of hip-hop, especially in New York. At the time New York hip-hop was being defined by harder, grittier groups such as Wu-Tang but also an emerging jazz-inspired sound. Nas worked to bridge the gap between these two sounds with his work. He was 21 years old when the album came out, and worked with some of the area’s most accomplished producers to make the album.
Owing to Nas’ East-Coast roots, the instrumentation on this album is very sparse. “N.Y. State of Mind,” the first track on the album, is carried by a simple four-note piano progression over a boom-bap beat. There’s an added piano note at the end of each bar, which can be a bit grating, but the beat sets the dark, gritty tone of the song well. Nas uses stark imagery and his signature storytelling technique to weave a picture of the Queensbridge projects, his neighborhood. He touches on growing up, shootouts with the police and the drug business. Underlying the song, and the album as a whole, is a desperate urge to escape. Nas raps, “I dream I can sit back/And lamp like Capone, with drug scripts sewn/Or the legal luxury life, rings flooded with stones, holmes.” That’s the power of this album—in an era of extremely hard, braggadocious, violent music, Nas is able to deliver a message of movement while still grounding himself in the common rap vernacular.
Nas is sparse with the features on this album—all but two songs are done solo. That being said, Nas places his guest artists perfectly. On “Life’s a B****,” AZ takes the opening verse and chorus, delivering some of the smoothest flows on the album. AZ steals the show here, almost making Nas’s verse sound like an afterthought. The track closes with a trumpet solo from Nas’s dad Olu Dara.
The second feature, on the song “One Love,” is from Q-Tip, known from A Tribe Called Quest. He produced the song, and contributes vocals on the chorus. The production samples a thumb piano, which along with the double bass helps develop the song’s cold, dark soundscape. “One Love” is put together as a series of letters from Nas to various friends of his in jail. Nas sounds like he’s at rock bottom here, and the confidence we hear in his voice on the rest of the album is replaced with a deep bitterness. Instead of coming off as corny and forced, Nas’ frustration here is immediate, supported by his strong storytelling ability. Nas laments his incarcerated friends’ position, but realizes that the situation he’s in is not much better—they’re both trapped.
Sadly, Nas never really penned something else that lived up to “Illmatic,” though it’s very few rappers—or musicians in general—that have an album like this one under their belt. Every song here is a classic, and Nas hits every note from the braggadocious “Halftime” to the reminiscent “Memory Lane.” Turn on your favorite hip-hop single from the last 10 years; chances are it’s jacking one of Nas’ flows.