Illmatic: 90s hip hop at its finest
Nas was able to do in ten songs what any artist would be lucky to do over the span of an entire career, and he did it at twenty years old on his first album.
As a massive fan of classic hip hop, I knew from the first song that I was going to love this album. Illmatic is a spectacular album that sounds exactly like you want a classic hip hop record to sound. The drums are crisp, the samples are jazzy as hell and Nas’ vocals sit perfectly over the instrumentals so you can perfectly hear everthing he has to say.
The album opens with “The Genesis”, a skit featuring a variety of voices letting all those outside of the Bronx know that “Shit is mad real right now in the projects.” The skit is immediately followed “N.Y. State of Mind”, which as far as I’m concerned is a perfect song. The dissonant pianos combined with a variety of sampled sounds that range from random notes to what sounds like an electric drill creat a brilliant canvas for Nas’ story to be painted over.
Nas tells an incredibly detailed story about what it’s like to grow up surrounded by gang violence. His incredibly precise and meticulous lyrics like “Investments in stocks, sewin’ up the blocks to sell rocks / Winnin’ gunfights with mega-cops,” paint such a vivid image in the listener’s head that it’s almost impossible not to be drawn in.
The lyricism on the album is something that really kept me consistently engaged. Listening through it, it seemed like every song has a bar that feels like some sort of incredibly philisophical observation. Hearing AZ say “Life’s a bitch and then you die, that’s why we get high / ’Cause you never know when you’re gonna go” really made me sit there and say “Yeah, life really is a bitch and then you die.”
This is yet another example of a truly complete album. Every single song stands up on its own as a spectacular composition. From all of the vocal and brass samples on “Halftime” to the swinging drums and vocal delivery on “One Time 4 Your Mind”, there isn’t a moment on this album that is wasted.
9/10
