Nas's Illmatic Page 7
Chapter Six
Faith/Despair
“That’s what this is all about, right? Clothes, bankrolls and hos, you know what I’m saying? Yo, then what, man, what?”
Nas asks for more in the brief intro to “Life’s a Bitch,” the third track on Illmatic. Though he puts it in his friend AZ’s words, Nas at 20 years old had confronted his reality with a simple refrain: “life’s a bitch and then you die.” If “N.Y. State of Mind” painted a picture of Nas’s reality and “One Love” saw him confronting it, forced to recognize its limitations and, finally, its fatal flaws, then this song is Nas beginning to struggle with his next step. How could he ever get past his reality?
AZ’s verse on the song, the only guest appearance on the record, is Nas’s reality personified, drained of any hope but the kind reserved for those endowed with the “street ghetto essence.” This is a future of “stackin’ plenty papers, keepin’ it real, packin’ steel, gettin’ high.” The Brooklyn rapper who, like Nas before him had with “Live at the BBQ,” burst onto the scene with this first-ever recorded verse crystallized the hip hop gangsta world view with his rhymes in the first few couplets:
Visualizing the realism of life in actuality
Fuck who’s the baddest, a person’s status depends on salary
And my mentality is money orientated
I’m destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it.
This doesn’t sound so different than Young Jeezy saying “I command you niggas to get money” or even 50 Cent’s famous credo Get Rich or The Tryin’. AZ looks back to a time before “all of us turned to sinners,” but simply shrugs and says “something must have got in us.” His flippancy is balanced with a determination to keep his head down and power through tough times. Nas struggled to rise above the fray in “N.Y. State of Mind,” refusing to get stuck in the game, but here AZ seems mired in the thick of it all, focused on every day because, he is convinced, focusing on the big picture can only lead to despair and the inevitability of death. There’s no heaven here either, because in this worldview, we all “turn to vapors” and then disappear.
But even here, following AZ on “Life’s a Bitch,” Nas offers hope and the promise of redemption in an odd but beautiful line:
I switched my motto, instead of saying “Fuck tomorrow,”
That buck that bought a bottle could have struck the lotto.
Apart from the technical pleasure of this couplet, including the complex rhyme scheme, the double-consonant word choice, and the unobtrusive alliteration, Nas has said something rather profound here. And yet…are we being asked to choose between alcoholism and gambling? It’s true that the “lottery” for Nas isn’t just gambling, but making music or getting an education, or really any possible way out of the ghetto for a kid growing up surrounded by poverty; the chances must seem that minute. But the lotto isn’t a metaphor for Nas, or at least that kind. He is using a beer and a set of numbers as opposing outlooks on life. One represents resigned despair, the other , a serious—if mathematically illogical—display of faith.
Nas is not the first person in popular music to adopt (or even then reject) the cynical battle cry “Fuck tomorrow.” The Who’s “My Generation” finds them defending their own, asserting “hope I die before I get old” (they didn’t), and of course their nearly direct descendants The Sex Pistols told everyone there was “no future” so they could sell as many records as possible up front. But the authenticity afforded Nas by his experience makes his despair ring so much truer. Rather than dabble in it, however, Nas is much more concerned with his own condition, or more specifically, how to improve it. With his verse on “Life’s a Bitch,” he seems to be asking for a way out, hoping for redemption and putting his faith in the remote odds that he will be able to escape the reality that surrounds him.
Hope for Nas, unlike many of his more religious peers, doesn’t seem to come from God. Though he occasionally mentions God on Illmatic, most of the time he is referring to his friends, and the rest is nonspecific or occasionally blasphemous. Nas, who it was reported had originally wanted the cover of the record to be a picture of him holding Jesus in a headlock, did not affiliate himself with any religion at the time of release. “It’s good to do research and study what the ancient Muslims or the ancient Christians were about and how the religion came about,” he told interviewer Bobbito.
It’s good to look at the lessons and see how they tried to educate each other . I studied lessons. I have knowledge of self. I don’t have no religion, but I studied my Black African history…Right here in America, it’s all about living and doing the right thing. Do the right thing, and that’s righteous right there.
On “Life’s a Bitch,” Nas does say he’s “some Godly like thing created.” But while this might call to a higher power, it might also play into Nas’s self-positioning as the savior of his people. This is the same man who had “God’s Son” tattooed on his chest, whose first words on record were “street’s disciple,” and who has posed as Jesus on more than one occasion. In fact, through most of Illmatic, Nas isn’t expecting religion to save him; he’s expecting to take the place of religion. This is most obvious on “Memory Lane,” where Nas speaks of his own capacity for miracles.
My intellect prevails from a hangin’ cross with nails
I reinforce the frail, with lyrics that’s real
Word to Christ, a disciple of streets, trifle on beats
I decipher prophecies through a mic and say “peace.”
His powers seem to stem not from himself, but from a higher power. It’s just not the one you’d expect. Earlier in the song, he claims to “drop the ancient manifested hip hop straight off the block.” He is celebrating his birthday on “Life’s a Bitch,” not because he was created by God, but because he is thankful for having “rhymes 365 days annual plus some.” Nas is “straight out the fuckin’ dungeons of rap,” and this public figure that he has created is doomed to “carry the cross” not for the sins of man, but for the sins of hip hop. The first track, called “The Genesis,” positions Nas as the savior from the beginning.
Nas puts his faith in hip hop. In “The World is Yours,” he ridicules the alternative, labeling it irrelevant and defeatist:
There’s no days, for broke days, we sell it, smoke pays
While all the old folks pray to Jesus soakin’ they sins in trays
Of holy water, odds against Nas are slaughter
Despite or perhaps because of this rejection, “The World Is Yours” tosses off the weight of poverty and responsibility in order to revel in its opposite. It would be surprising if Nas didn’t purposefully place the song directly after “Life’s a Bitch.” That song’s quiet defiance of despair is fully realized with the later track, which features the most hopeful and optimistic Nas on the album, the one where he resolves to clear his path towards redemption:
I need a new nigga for this black cloud to follow
‘Cause while it’s over me it’s too dark to see tomorrow..
Illmatic, like a great deal of hip hop, has been called nihilistic. A large part of this comes from most rappers’ refusal to judge their subjects, as a common (and lazy) assumption is that if you do not take a stand on something you are advocating it. Nas certainly avoids condemning his surroundings or the lifestyle he leads on the record, but he hardly advocates it either, and here is asking for a brighter day. On “The World Is Yours,” he certainly desires change, and though there is a certain level of irony in taking your rallying cry from a character in a movie that is killed in the end, the basic sentiment is more conscious hip hop than gangsta rap. “You wanna get it but you ain’t doin’ nothin’ but sittin’ there,” Nas says on a promotional video for the album. “You gotta get up and get yours, ‘cause it’s yours, you know what I mean?”
Yet Nas doesn’t seem to strive for anything here beyond the basic needs of survival. Though it is mostly physical survival he is concerned with, economic survival is close behind, and though he qu
estions it at the beginning of “Life’s a Bitch,” Nas certainly believes cash rules everything around him. Even on that song he asserts “it’s all about cash in abundance.” He flirts with drug dealing because “loose cracks produce stacks” and “Nowadays I need the green in a flash just like the next man.” Still he turns to his natural talent to save him, because “a crime couldn’t beat a rhyme.” Money is important to Nas, but his ultimate faith returns to himself. “Rhymes’ll make me richer than a slipper made Cinderella,” he correctly predicts on “One Time 4 Your Mind.” As long as you have faith in yourself, the rest will come naturally.
Though he would eventually dip into “rings fronted with stones,” Nas is more concerned about making money than flaunting it on his debut. But the root of the drive to consume that hip hop finds itself stuck with today stems from much of the same belief system Nas espouses here. Capitalism and commercialism rule hip hop, because hip hop is fundamentally about the American Dream. Chasing it. Pointing out its inconsistencies. Being shut out of it: Nas points this out quite literally when, in his 2003 video for “I Can,” a simple and refreshing song directed at the Black youth, he wears a shirt that says “I am the American Dream.”
The pursuit of truth in the face of myth dominates underground hip hop just as strongly as it does mainstream rappers who “make it rain” and make proud appearances on MTV’s Cribs. The image of the star rapper is the image of the cowboy, forging his Own path, crossing the law when the law needs to be crossed, living by his own set of rules. Nas, like his West Coast contemporary Tupac, plays with this persona as often as he embodies it. But unlike Tupac, who was raised by a former Black Panther and enjoyed a relatively safe childhood, Nas has the authenticity of despair to make his story ring true. Tupac’s contradictions often seemed like calculated positioning, with neither side revealing the true artist. Nas is able to seem like he believes in both alternatives, because they exist around him. There are many paths laid out on Illmatic, and each one for Nas makes up a parallel universe—“rich or doing years in the hundreds,” “havin’ dreams that I’m a gangsta…But just a nigga walking with his finger on the trigger.” He asks and answers the authenticity question: “Check the prognosis, is it real or showbiz?/My window faces shootouts, drug overdoses/Live amongst no roses, only the drama, for real.”
And still, Nas is left with just his own knowledge and an ingrained desire to make a better life. In the end, the most powerful statements of faith on Illmatic might come from the two earliest songs: “Halftime” and “It Ain’t Hard to Tell.” Here is where Nas takes a simple beat, ignores song construction, and simply spits his rhymes. These two songs aren’t about anything but Nas and his innate ability. He dominates break loops. He’s an ace when he faces the bass. He sets it off with his own rhyme. It’s clear that any artist who would rely so much on his own talent to carry his debut would be confident beyond recommended levels. But that disregard for convention helped Nas create great art just as it helped him attract a wide and diverse fan base. Though he knows and loves hip hop history, Nas’s confidence would push him towards innovation that would make this timeless, journey into adulthood seem fresh and unique.
Chapter Seven
Tradition/Revolution
“I don’t know how to start this shit …”
Nas begins “N.Y. State of Mind” with hesitation, but it can’t be because he is unsure of his mic skills. If it is, it’s the only place where his total faith in his talents fails him. Even as an ad-lib, his reticence is an unusual occurrence on the record. Nas didn’t intend to imply with this comment anything about the journey of Illmatic, but the line fits. The record carves a path to adulthood, littered along the way with sin and temptation. But this inner-struggle is mirrored by an outward reaction, the creation of a persona that interacts with the world and finds its place among many.
This is the ultimate choice for Nas: to follow in the footsteps of those that came before him, or to turn away from his existence and strive to make a better life. Illmatic was definitely a record that acknowledged tradition while igniting a revolution within hip hop. But within the album, Nas’s personal struggles culminate with this question of change, personal and environmental.
The choice is a multi-layered one for the emcee. It is one hip hop struggles with itself. The still-young genre carries the torch of Black American music, reflecting the mood of a culture spread out over a nation, occasionally speaking out against injustice, often intending to be nothing more than the social lubrication for a night designed to forget the burdens of life. And yet, hip hop provides a new musical vocabulary, created by the first generation to come of age in the so-called stagnation of the post-civil-rights era. Here is a truly post-modern genre that reflects life in the contemporary world, a musical style that represents the interplay between past and future. Is there anything that melds tradition and revolution more succinctly than appropriation?
Nas has direct association with this, because his father is a jazz musician.9 The new generation of musicians in the black community has embraced hip hop out of tradition and revolution. One without the other would not have been able to achieve the success that this unending line of musicians has seen over the long history of pop music.
For Nas, surrounded by hip hop, there must have seemed little that was revolutionary in becoming an emcee. Yet the power he has said he feels behind the microphone bestows upon him enormous responsibility. It’s conceivable that when he says he doesn’t know how to start this shit, the shit he could have been talking about is a revolution, musically and politically.
Breaking with tradition artistically is a major aspect of Nas’s reality of growing up and becoming an adult. His choice to become an artist and express himself is just as important to understanding his journey as what he is saying. It’s why even when Nas struggles on the record, he seems to have already succeeded, to have somehow broken free from the chains that bound him. This seismic shift Nas finds within himself on Illmatic is contrasted by the meaningless endings and cyclical rise-and-fall American epics that surround him.
Yet it is hard to know if Nas genuinely believes he has achieved this goal or if it is merely a fantasy he brings to life through his on-record persona. Just as rappers present themselves as invincible to bullets and bitches, does Nas feel he is impervious to the vicious cycle of his neighborhood only when he is in a position to brag? With hindsight as a guide, the answer is a resounding no, since Nas did, after all, escape his mapped-out destiny. But at the time, all he had was his powerful faith to guide him.
Certainly his persona on the record, contradictory in itself, has multiple sides to it. Two songs on the album, “One Time 4 Your Mind” and “Represent,” display the Nas persona in the most vivid detail. On these songs, Nas is an active participant in his fate, interacting with the world around him and not just leaning out his window for the bird’s eye view, safe behind the metaphorical lens.
“One Time 4 Your Mind” is the more traditional of the two, at its core more reminiscent of a Beach Boys song than an NWA song. The first verse is casual teenage rebellion. With a laid-back stunted delivery, Nas tells the story of an average day spent drinking beer, watching movies, getting high, and having sex. He listens to music and battles emcees. It’s all harmless fun. This is where he has been, it’s what he knows, and it’s what he enjoys. It’s all he seems to want in life.
Unlike other songs on the record, Nas does little observing in the verse. Most people are responding to him and his decisions. In “N.Y. State of Mind,” where he shoots up a crowd, Nas’s actions have much bigger repercussions. Yet he seems far more removed than he does on “One Time 4 Your Mind”, recounting insignificance and routine.
At its basic nature, the song is about surviving—or more accurately maintaining. Nas’s relationship with the world isn’t nihilistic, but he does seem aimless. Were Nas to make “One Time 4 Your Mind” now, the song might come off as depressing, a pathetic grasp at youthful indiscretion. Surrounded by the
cocky verbal displays and, to a large portion of his audience, other worldly accounts of this then-teenager’s ‘hood, “One Time 4 Your Mind” is uniquely relatable because it displays the universal uncertainty at a specific moment in every adolescent’s life, the time when rejection of the familiar looms large. Nas has recognized his reality and begun to understand and quantify his own talents. But he has yet to decide to do anything with them, to break free of the life he was given and take a chance on the unknown.
“Represent,” on the other hand, is a different Nas, the angry, violent, desperate Nas. This persona comes from tradition as well, but the tradition of death and destruction that Nas has seen take too many of his peers. He puts his listener inside the Queensbridge perspective in the first verse:
The streets is filled with undercovers, homicide chasin’ brothers
The D’s on the roof tryin’ to watch us and knock us
And killer coppers even come through in helicopters
It’s a war zone he describes, where the enemy comes at you from all sides. It is a violent struggle, but it’s hardly a revolution of which he speaks; this is business as usual. The only thing it seems he can do is strike out and make his mark in any way he can. In “One Time 4 Your Mind,” casual sex, weed smoking, and rhyme battling are simple things, the youthful indiscretions that come with a lack of direction and responsibility. On “Represent,” they’re turned into weapons against the system that oppresses, “cause life ain’t shit but stress fake niggas and crab stunts/so I guzzle my Hennesey while pullin’ on mad blunts.” Instead of maintaining that “crime couldn’t beat a rhyme,” the Nas of “Represent” thinks “the rap game reminds me of the crack game.” Here, to the Nas portrayed in this song, is how to “represent,” how to live “the real fuckin’ life.”