Nas's Illmatic Read online

  “Represent” is quite possibly the most place-specific of all of the songs on Illmatic, the song where Nas mentions his block, the 40 side of Vernon, in the outro, and gives shout-outs to his crew in the final verse. “Memory Lane” and “N.Y. State of Mind” delve into the experience of growing up in the projects, but “Represent” is most focused on Nas’s existence, his tight-knit universe where “we all stare at the out-of-towners” and time is measured by noting “before the BDP conflict with MC Shan.” It’s this contained history, his personal heritage, that presents him with that final choice to press on in the context of what he knows, or leave it behind by choosing something different for himself.

  These back-to-back songs portray the two public sides of the early Nas persona (or, for that matter, early hip hop): the everyday character that is just trying to get by and have fun doing it, and the frustrated, unpredictable Nas that is stuck on his corner and trying to survive. They are natural reactions to the pressure Nas experienced growing up in Queensbridge, but they are also, as contradictory as they may seem, instantly recognizable in the natural progression of maturity.

  Illmatic might seem limited in its scope to a small four- or five-block radius, but from the specific comes the universal. The contradictions of the album exist everywhere, and the honesty and specificity of them rings true on a universal level because people recognize their own truth in other peoples’ truths. Nas’s human struggle is the struggle of a teenager stepping into manhood, an artist coming into his own, and an oppressed citizen breaking free from his chains. These individual triumphs mirror the triumphs of the community, just as their youthful ambitions reflect the collective experience. When it is done properly, the personal can be applied indiscriminately.

  The man that Nas became on Illmatic would seem fearless if he wasn’t so often open about his doubts. His artistic output might seem miraculous if he didn’t so frequently offer a window into his process. But he does these things because Nas is nothing if not honest and open as an artist, and this vulnerability leads fans to relate to him in ways they cannot with similar rappers. It’s hard to imagine following in the footsteps of Biggie and Jay when listening to Ready to Die or Reasonable Doubt. Their personas are kings, unstoppable legends on the street, the 80s action-movie stars to Nas’s flawed independent-film protagonist. The later debuts seem more in line with the traditional gangster persona, the NWA soldier/heroes that listeners viewed with awe and respect. Nas’s revolution is in refusing to glorify or demonize, instead creating a realistic—and therefore sympathetic and universally recognizable—autobiographical portrait.

  This is not just a representation of the tradition of street-level reporting within hip hop that has seen its days come and go. Illmatic stands as the most cogent argument for a non-judgmental depiction of violence in hip hop. While most artists either glorify and/or exaggerate the violence they have experienced or take a measured and consistent stand against the destruction of their communities, Nas—perhaps more than any other emcee—displays on Illmatic the effectiveness of using violence as a narrative tool to accurately portray a very real and urgent situation within an other wise invisible community. It is, of course, easy to find negative and senseless portrayals of violence in mainstream hip hop, instances without excuse. But Illmatic is an undeniable argument for the social significance (and responsibility) of realistic depictions of violence within hip hop. This depiction could ideally provide a map forward for a genre that is struggling to retain its tradition of realism without shirking its responsibilities as a representative of the inner city.

  There is an idea that art can change the world. If this means that people who experience that art would immediately set out to right the wrongs that have been done, then hip hop has seemingly failed. Violent crime in the inner-cities, particularly in places like Philadelphia, is going up, the number of people below the poverty line is growing, and black people in this country are now as pessimistic as they were twenty years ago, at the height of the crack epidemic, about their ability to succeed in America. Instead of highlighting the problems of the communities that produced it in order to effect change, hip hop has become, for the majority of mainstream America, the representation of those very problems.

  But records like Illmatic have shed light on corners of the nation that go ignored in the conventional media, and they do so in a way that is not depressing or preachy, but invigorating and redemptive. The message of salvation speaks not just to the average corner kid who “loves committin’ sins,” but to America’s long-held belief in a second chance. It reaches every demographic in the country and informs their perspective of America, instilling with particular intensity the notion of that ultimate contradiction in this nation, that we are comprised of individuals who can make anything of themselves that they want, and yet we are bound together by history and social and political barriers that stifle that dream.

  Once this contradiction is recognized, it does not seem so hard to understand where Nas’s persona comes from, and how easily it can shift and bend at will. Nor does it seem unlikely to imagine that all of those kids who do understand that contradiction, no matter where they come from and how easily they personally can achieve the American dream, would have a perspective on their country that is far different from their parents’. This is the true revolution of hip hop, the one that has yet to play itself out.

  Whether or not it does succeed is up to the same process that Nas goes through on Illmatic. It’s a question of maturation, and the evolution of the individual’s perception of the world. As “the essence of adolescence” leaves their bodies, will reality set in and destroy the hope for a better tomorrow? Just as Illmatic ultimately calls for redemption and evolution, its audience must choose between suffering the same jaded fate as previous generations or retaining the promise and resolve of their youth.

  Chapter Eight

  Breaks/Flows

  Hip hop is a microphone, a camera, and a stage for the unheard millions in America and around the world. But first and foremost it must be a musical art form. If this is easy to forget with an album like Illmatic, it is because, again and at every step, the record plays so strongly into (or has defined?) the conventional hip hop narrative. Nas is the center of focus, the powerful voice of strength and direction that his musical backbone supports but never controls. The beats are the nerve endings to his brain cells.

  Because the music itself is rarely examined as closely as the lyrics, there is a real impression that hip hop has yet to gain full recognition as a credible musical genre. When arguing against that lack of respect, many advocates point to records like The Roots’ Phrenology, Outkast’s Aquemini, and Kanye West’s recent collaboration with Jon Brion on Late Registration as proof that hip hop has become the leading innovator among musical genres over the past decade, and its music should receive at least the same amount of attention as the lyrics.

  However, while records like those mentioned are all powerful musical statements, they are essentially hybrid records that gain recognition because of their already established genre touchstones. The musical accomplishments on Illmatic, a record that displays the most fundamental sonic characteristics of true hip hop, are in fact more impressive, and more indicative of the need not to ignore the breaks behind the flows.

  Hip hop music stems from a few basic concepts, but, as countless imitators and failed experiments have proven, it is deceptively simple. A genre that originated out of a lack of resources to produce the kind of music a community was hungry for became a worldwide phenomenon because a generation’s worth of artists took those building blocks and made something incredible out of them. What follows is a track-by-track account of the making of what Pete Rock, one of the most important of those artists, calls “the perfect example of real hip hop music.”

  The Genesis

  The intro to Illmatic begins with an extended sound clip from Wild Style, the cult classic that was the first significant hip hop film. It’s not just the dialogue that
is borrowed: the subway rumbling at the beginning and the hard-hitting drums that kick in and lead back to Nas are all directly lifted from the film, including “Subway Theme,” the song created for the film by DJ Grand Wizard Theodore and Chris Stein of the pop group Blondie.

  First and foremost, the use of the sample immediately set the album up as an authentic hip hop audio document. “The only thing I had never heard when the album came out was the intro,” says DJ Premier of listening to the record all the way through for the first time. “And even that, I mean, to use Wild Style is a big deal. But he comes from that era where he knows about Wild Style, he’s seen the movie and he respects that. That’s one of the best movies to ever showcase true MCing and DJing and B-Boying and graffiti from the very purest form of this culture. That’s the first day of school’s homework.”

  Running underneath the clip was Nas’s own genesis, his first verse from “Live at the BBQ” (it cuts out right as he is about to say his most famous line, “When I was 12 I went to hell for snuffin’ Jesus”). As the music kicks in, Nas sits around with his friends AZ and Cormega, the latter of which has the first line “Yo Nas, what the fuck is this bullshit on the radio, son?” They talk back and forth about hip hop and their lives, and Nas finishes the track with “Representin’ is illmatic.”

  “The Genesis” is often maligned not for what it is, a short and mostly harmless intro that sets up the tone of the album, but for what it isn’t. Most specifically, it isn’t a tenth track. This, people often argue, makes Illmatic more of a nine-song EP than a full-length album, particularly in the CD era when hip hop albums including skits routinely run over 20 tracks.

  But regardless of whether or not the length of the album is appropriate, “The Genesis” manages to provide the album with a proper introduction without dwelling too long on premusic formalities (see Wu Tang Forever for an example of a first track that everyone skips after the first listen). The name itself implies the creation of a world, and even if Nas’s world already existed, here is certainly an invitation in at the very least.

  Serch, who executive-produced the record, argues strongly for the necessity of the track in cementing Illmatic’s reputation. “If you look at a Lou Reed record, or Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, or Pink Floyd’s The Wall,” he says:

  All of those records have one thing in common. They are all incredibly autobiographical. They all tell a story of an artist finding themselves within the groove of their music. Nas wanted to tell the story of where he came from. That’s why “The Genesis” is so important on that record and why we fought with Charlie Ahearn [the producer/director of Wild Style] to get that Wild Style sample cleared.

  The battle Serch speaks of, one which began to rage when Fab 5 Freddy (who was directing the video for “One Love” at the time) bizarrely told Ahearn not to let Nas use the sample, could have ended with a cease and desist order against Illmatic because Ahearn was not sure he was happy with the terms of use.

  That Serch and Faith Newman of Sony fought to include the sample at the risk of delaying a record that was already losing sales due to heavily bootlegged leaks displays the importance they placed on the introduction. When the album begins, and the subway rumbles by as Zoro declares his destiny, they seem very smart indeed.

  N.Y. State of Mind

  The first real song on Illmatic is arguably the best, a definitive interpretation, depending on your mood, of Nas, Queensbridge, or all of New York Hip Hop. Serch says the track sums up his experiences visiting Nas in his neighborhood. “The intro of ‘N.Y. State of Mind’ is you’re walking out of the subway into QB. And that’s what it feels like going out of the dark of the subway to the foot of the projects. That piano riff. when it slowly melts in and gets louder, you just know that Nas is about to bring heat.”

  The irony, in fact, is that Nas didn’t know it. The brief intro, where Nas and his friend ad-lib a few lines, was entirely unplanned. Premier tells the story of how that first take became the one they used:

  Showbiz was there from Showbiz and AG; we were all in the same circles. And I was searching for the sample, and when I found that sample, Nas was like “Ooh ooh, this sounds ill, can you hook that up? And I hooked it up. Then all of a sudden, Grandwizard from Bravehearts, Grandwiz used to always be there, and next thing we know it’s like “yeah yeah, black, it’s time” and they went back and forth and then he was like “straight out the fucking dungeons of rap, where fake niggas don’t make it back.” He is just kinda talking and I’m looking at him ‘cause I’m about to count him in. And he’s looking at the paper just shaking his head to himself like, “I don’t know how to start this shit.” And I’m counting “one, two, three,” and he looks up and sees me counting “two, three,” and he just goes “yo” and starts rhyming. He did the whole verse non-stop and he just stopped and was like “damn, it don’t sound right, does it sound good out there?” And we were just like high fivin’ and going crazy, like, we were just blown away.

  The beat Premier gave Nas for the track was dark and paranoid, matching a deep piano riff (with a high flutter at the end) from jazz drummer/pianist Joe Chambers’s “Mind Rain” with a high sharp guitar stab from Donald Byrd’s “Flight Time.” The chorus is Premier scratching a sample of Rakim from “Mahogany,” off 1990’s Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em. For most of the verses, Premier sticks with the bar-length piano sample, laid over hard drums that snap tight on the speakers. The one place where he deviates is the beginning of the second verse, where Nas tells the story of his dreams, when the piano is traded for the guitar’s piercing urgency. The piano’s dirge-like consistency looks to find death at every turn, while the insistence of the guitar dots quick flashes of opportunity across a bleak landscape. Their dueling tones tell the tale of Nas’s daily struggle, grinding out his days in the trenches, desperate to claw his way up to the top.

  “That one right there is one of my favorites,” Nas told Rolling Stone in 2007, upon the release of his greatest hits. “Because that one painted a picture of the city like nobody else at that time. I’m about eighteen when I’m saying that rhyme. I worked on that first album all my life, up until I was twenty, when it came out. I was a very young cat talking about it like a Vietnam veteran, talking like I’ve been through it all. That’s just how I felt around that time, and the track does that for me.”

  The gritty feel of the cut, one of the dirtiest tracks to come out of New York, was entirely intentional according to Serch.

  A lot of records lose a little in the translation of mastering, because mastering is all about being clean. But that record in particular, when we mastered it, we kept it as dirty as possible. The only thing we did is level the song so that it was leveled with every other record. And you can feel how dirty that record is when it comes on. It was a bit of an argument, ‘cause when we mastered it the engineer really had a hard time Listening to it. And we were like ’nononono, this record stays the way it is, we just need you to do the levels.’

  “N.Y. State of Mind” was also the only track Premier made for the record that he felt immediately happy with. Though his initial beats for “Memory Lane” and “Represent” never sat well with him (see below), “N.Y. State of Mind” was perfect from the start.

  I remember when Q-Tip gave me a cassette tape of the “One Love” shit with the Heath brother s. And I remember he didn’t have the drums yet, it was just the sample, and he paused taped it, so it wasn’t too tight yet. But after I heard “One Love,” I went in and did “N.Y State of Mind” the next day. ‘Cause, you know, it was a competition, it was like we all got on the phone with each other like “yo, man, did you get a new beat?” Like “Nah, man, I’m about to make one.” And I knew Q-Tip was gonna come with it and I knew Pete Rock was gonna come with it, and I knew Large Professor was gonna come with it. And it made the album much better because of that.

  Over a decade later, he doesn’t hesitate to name his favorite contribution to the record: “Hands down, ‘N.Y. State of Mind.’ Even part 2 [off of I Am
…] was good.” Despite this satisfaction, he doesn’t see his work on the record as representative of anything but pure hip hop. When asked if his trips to Queensbridge informed his beat on “N.Y. State of Mind,” he shrugs off the implications. “I consider myself a fan who’s been given a hip hop lottery ticket only the prize wasn’t money it was, like, you won a chance to go in the studio with artists and create your own stuff. I make stuff that, as a fan, I would want to create if I had access to the equipment. I’ve been given the opportunity to make records and I just haven’t stopped yet.”

  Life’s a Bitch

  The third song on Illmatic was produced by Queensbridge-native L.E.S., who still tours with Nas as his DJ. “Being that he had all these big name producers on his album, I felt kinda good that Nas picked me to do something,” L.E.S. told The Source when the record was released. “I was never really presenting shit to Nas though, and he ain’t really come to me for a beat. We was just chillin’ and he was like, ‘Yo, that’s it.’” The beat is a relatively simple one, constructed out of the Gap Band’s modest hit “Yearning for Your Love” and a few simple percussion touches.10 But the track sticks out as a smooth, wistful song when placed next to its harder-hitting brother s. Nas’s work on the second verse is as strong as his best work on the album, but it’s often overshadowed by the work of two other people that make “Life’s a Bitch” the exception to Illmatic’s biggest rules.