Illmatic
Illmatic is the debut studio album by the American rapper Nas, released on April 19, 1994, through Columbia Records. After signing with the label with the help of MC Serch, Nas recorded the album in 1992 and 1993 at Chung King Studios, D&D Recording, Battery Studios, and Unique Recording Studios in New York City. The album's production was handled by DJ Premier, Large Professor, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, L.E.S., and Nas himself. Styled as a hardcore hip-hop album, Illmatic features multi-syllabic internal rhymes and inner-city narratives based on Nas' experiences growing up in the Queensbridge Houses in Queens, New York. He started writing lyrics for the album when he was 16 years old.
The album debuted at number 12 on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 59,000 copies in its first week. Initial sales fell below expectations and its five singles failed to achieve significant chart success. Despite the album's low initial sales, Illmatic received rave reviews from most music critics, who praised its production and Nas' lyricism. On January 17, 1996, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, and on December 11, 2001, it earned a platinum certification after shipping 1,000,000 copies in the United States. As of February 6, 2019, the album had sold 2 million copies in the United States.
Since its initial reception, Illmatic has been acclaimed by writers and music critics as a landmark album in East Coast hip-hop. Its influence on subsequent hip-hop artists has been attributed to the album's production and Nas' lyricism, and contributed to the revival of the New York City rap scene, introducing a number of stylistic trends to the region. The album is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential hip-hop albums of all time, appearing on numerous best album lists by critics and publications. Billboard wrote in 2015 that "Illmatic is widely seen as the best hip-hop album ever". In 2020, the album was ranked by Rolling Stone at number 44 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and in the following year, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Background
As a teenager, Nas wanted to pursue a career as a rapper and enlisted his best friend and neighbor, Willy "Ill Will" Graham, as his DJ. Nas initially went by the nickname "Kid Wave" before adopting the alias "Nasty Nas". At the age of fifteen, he met producer Large Professor from Flushing, Queens, who introduced him to his group Main Source. Nas made his recorded debut with them on the opening verse on "Live at the Barbeque" from their 1991 album Breaking Atoms. Nas made his solo debut on his 1992 single "Halftime" for the soundtrack to the film Zebrahead. The single added to the buzz surrounding Nas, earning him comparisons to the highly influential golden age rapper Rakim. Despite his buzz in the underground scene, Nas did not receive an offer for a recording contract and was rejected by major rap labels such as Cold Chillin' and Def Jam Recordings. Nas and Ill Will continued to work together, but their partnership was cut short when Graham was murdered by a gunman in Queensbridge on May 23, 1992; Nas' brother was also shot that night, but survived. Nas has cited that moment as a "wake-up call" for him.In mid-1992, MC Serch, whose group 3rd Bass had dissolved, began working on a solo project and approached Nas. At the suggestion of producer T-Ray, Serch collaborated with Nas for "Back to the Grill", the lead single for Serch's 1992 solo debut album Return of the Product. At the recording session for the song, Serch discovered that Nas did not have a recording contract and subsequently contacted Faith Newman, an A&R executive at Sony Music Entertainment. As Serch recounted, "Nas was in a position where his demo had been sittin' around, 'Live at the Barbeque' was already a classic, and he was just tryin' to find a decent deal So when he gave me his demo, I shopped it around. I took it to Russell first, Russell said it sounded like G Rap, he wasn't wit' it. So I took it to Faith. Faith loved it, she said she'd been looking for Nas for a year and a half. They wouldn't let me leave the office without a deal on the table."
Once MC Serch assumed the role of executive producer for Nas' debut project, he attempted to connect Nas with various producers. Numerous New York-based producers were eager to work with the up-and-coming rapper and went to Power House Studios with Nas. Among those producers was DJ Premier, recognized at the time for his raw and aggressive jazz sample-based production and heavy scratching, and for his work with rapper Guru as a part of hip-hop duo Gang Starr. After his production on Lord Finesse & DJ Mike Smooth's Funky Technician and Jeru the Damaja's The Sun Rises in the East, Premier began recording exclusively at D&D Studios in New York City, before working with Nas on Illmatic.
Recording
Prior to recording, DJ Premier listened to Nas' debut single, and later stated: "When I heard 'Half Time', that was some next shit to me. That's just as classic to me as 'Eric B For President' and 'The Bridge'. It just had that type of effect. As simple as it is, all of the elements are there. So from that point, after Serch approached me about doing some cuts, it was automatic. You'd be stupid to pass that up even if it wasn't payin' no money." Serch later noted the chemistry between Nas and DJ Premier, recounting that "Primo and Nas, they could have been separated at birth. It wasn't a situation where his beats fit their rhymes, they fit each other." While Serch reached out to DJ Premier, Large Professor contacted Pete Rock to collaborate with Nas on what became "The World Is Yours". Shortly afterwards, L.E.S. and A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip chose to work on the album. "Life's a Bitch" contains a cornet solo performed by Nas' father, Olu Dara, with features by Brooklyn-based rapper AZ.In an early promotional interview, Nas claimed that the name "Illmatic" was a reference to his incarcerated friend, Illmatic Ice. Nas later described the title name as "supreme ill. It's as ill as ill gets. That shit is a science of everything ill." At the time of its recording, expectations in the hip-hop scene were high for Illmatic. In a 1994 interview for The Source, which dubbed him "the second coming", Nas spoke highly of the album, saying that "this feels like a big project that's gonna affect the world We in here on the down low doing something for the world. That's how it feels, that's what it is. For all the ones that think it's all about some ruff shit, talkin' about guns all the time, but no science behind it, we gonna bring it to them like this." AZ recounted recording on the album, "I got on Nas' album and did the 'Life's a Bitch' song, but even then I thought I was terrible on it, to be honest. But once people started hearing that and liking it, that's what built my confidence. I thought, 'OK, I can probably do this.' That record was everything. To be the only person featured on Illmatic when Nas is considered one of the top men in New York at that time, one of the freshest new artists, that was big." During the sessions, Nas composed the song "Nas Is Like", which he later recorded as a single for his 1999 album I Am....
Regarding the album's opening song "N.Y. State of Mind", producer DJ Premier later said, "When we did 'N.Y. State of Mind,' at the beginning when he says, 'Straight out the dungeons of rap / Where fake niggas don't make it back,' then you hear him say, 'I don't know how to start this shit,' 'cause he had just written it. He's got the beat running in the studio, but he doesn't know how he's going to format how he's going to convey it. So he's going, 'I don't know how to start this shit,' and I'm counting him in . One, two, three. And then you can hear him go, 'Yo,' and then he goes right into it."
Themes
Illmatic contains highly discerning treatment of its subject matter: gang rivalries, desolation, and the ravages of urban poverty. Nas, who was twenty years old when the album was released, focuses on depicting his own experiences, creating highly detailed first-person narratives that deconstruct the troubled life of an inner city teenager. Jeff Weiss of Pitchfork describes the theme of the album as a "tory of a gifted writer born into squalor, trying to claw his way out of the trap. It's somewhere between The Basketball Diaries and Native Son..." The narratives featured in Illmatic originate from Nas' own experiences as an adolescent growing up in the Queensbridge housing projects located in the Long Island City-section of Queens. Nas said in an interview in 2001: "When I made Illmatic I was a little kid in Queensbridge trapped in the ghetto. My soul was trapped in Queensbridge projects." In a 2012 interview, he explained his inspiration for exploring this subject matter:Nas's depictions of project life alternate from moments of pain and pleasure to frustration and braggadocio. Jeff Weiss describes the "enduring image" often associated with Nas' narrated stream of consciousness: " baby-faced Buddha monk in public housing, scribbling lotto dreams and grim reaper nightmares in dollar notebooks, words enjambed in the margins. The only light is the orange glow of a blunt, bodega liquor, and the adolescent rush of first creation. Sometimes his pen taps the paper and his brain blanks. In the next sentence, he remembers dark streets and the noose."
Along with its narratives, Illmatic is distinct for its many portrayals and descriptions of places, people, and interactions. In his songs, Nas often depicts the corners and boulevards of Queensbridge, while mentioning the names of streets, friends, local crews and drug dealers, and utilizing vernacular slang indigenous to his hometown. Poet and author Kevin Coval describes this approach to songwriting as that of a "hip-hop poet-reporter...rooted in the intimate specificity of locale." Commenting on Nas' use of narrative, Sohail Daulatzai, Professor of Film and Media Studies at University of Southern California, compares the album to cinema, citing its "detailed descriptions, dense reportage, and visually stunning rhymes..." In Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic, he writes: "Like the 1965 landmark masterpiece film The Battle of Algiers, which captured the Algerian resistance against French colonialism, Illmatic brilliantly blurred the lines between fiction and documentary, creating a heightened sense of realism and visceral eloquence for Nas' renegade first-person narratives and character-driven odes."