Album Review: Illmatic [1994] #51

I first came across Nas when I was quite young. My dad used to have a CD with lots of different 90's hiphop on, despite the fact that he wasn't the kind of guy you'd expect to be bumping Life's A Bitch while driving his sun to school. It wasn't an experience that led me into hiphop, it would take me many years to finally begin to sift through the classics, something I'm still not quite done with yet, but it's a fun moment that I still think about whenever The Genesis quietens down and Illmatic truly gets going.



I talk a lot about atmosphere in my reviews, about how a certain song or album can create a certain feeling or place your mind in a certain place, and it's a factor that's very important to me when I evaluate a piece of music for its merits. I often hear that Illmatic is an album that truly gets the idea of atmosphere, of putting the listener in the shoes of a kid growing up in Queens in New York, living in the parts of New York that we outsiders don't really see on TV. I personally would agree, even if I can't really picture how it would be to grow up in the time and place that Nas did. I'm a white kid from a middle class suburb who doesn't know a lot about violence and "the streets" but there's still something that resonates with me and the place that I grew up with during the moments of serenity on Illmatic, be it during the closing trumpets on Life's A Bitch, the thundering beat during the hook of Halftime or the piano interlude of The World Is Yours.

This is what makes Illmatic stand out to me, how Nas was able to incorporate the feeling of summertime in a nasty neighborhood in just the instrumentals and feeling of the record, being able to place the listener in his shoes even before spitting his first line. I think this is also what has made Illmatic live on as such a legendary record, and one of the most iconic hiphop records of all time, in my opinion surpassing Wu Tang's Enter The 36 Chamber's despite being lower on this particular list than the Wu.

While the feeling that's attributed to this record is what ties it into the legendary album that it actually is, its real strengths lies in other places. The beats are positive, and to recount the comparison I previously did, sounds like summertime in a nasty neighborhood when combined with Nas' lyrics about the violence and the street life. You've got tracks like Life's A Bitch which sounds almost West Coast production wise, with the laidback pads sounding not too far from something like Ice Cube's Today Was A Good Day but with Nas rapping about how shitty life can be, and then you've got a track the nostlagic Memory Lane, built around a few gleeful plinks and a repeated "whoo-oh". There's a child like feeling in most of the songs that faces the reality of the situation in Nas' lyrics that swap between street life story tellings and lines of poetry "behind the walls of intelligence, life is defined".

Nas' lyrics have always been an odd combination for their time and can often times be seen as quite mellow when compared to Nas' contemporaries who often dabbled in explicit horror core. People like Biggie, members of The Wu Tang Clan and guys like Mobb Deep weren't afraid to tell you their visceral stories (often times a bit spiced up) while Nas tries to present his story as realistically and truthfully as possible while painting a vivid picture for the listener to indulge in.

Lyrically, Nas also shines with a technicality that at many times can be considered some of the best as far as assonance goes, like on Life's A Bitch when Nas gives the iconic line of:

I switched my motto
instead of saying fuck tomorrow that buck that bought a bottle could have struck the lotto

Which definitely is up there as one of the greatest verses in hiphop to this day.

Illmatic is one of those records that I have a lot of praise to give and it's one of those hiphop records that I wouldn't hesitate a moment before recommending to someone, especially as an introduction to hiphop. I mean I often times play Life's A Bitch at parties with my closest friends and I guarantee you that noone only likes it ironically.

Despite my praise for the record, it's one that I personally am not too fond of. While it's a great record seeing to beats, lyricism and rapping, it's one of those records that I rarely find myself returning to, despite enjoying whenever I accidentaly come across it, be it through shuffle on my musicplayer or someone playing one of the hits on radio, but it's one that I'm not too fond of personally.

Still, there's very little that gets me as hyped up as hearing "Straight out the fucking dungeons of rap".

Nas
Illmatic [1994]
6.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev