#402 - Nas - Illmatic (1994)

MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:

Released on April 19th, 1994 on Columbia Records and produced by Faith N., MC Serch, DJ Premier, Large Professor, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, L.E.S., and himself this is the debut album by the American, Queens, New York rapper and songwriter.

Born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones in Brooklyn, New York in 1973 to a postal worker mother and a jazz musician father his family soon moved to the Queensbridge public housing development in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, New York.

His new neighbor, Willy Graham turned Nas onto Hip-Hop and after his parent’s divorce and he dropped out of school in the eighth grade Nas started rapping with Graham as his DJ, Ill Will.

He was highly influenced by Rap pioneers Rakim and Kool G Rap as well as by the Nuwaubian Nation and The Five-Percent Nation, community-building, Black Power organizations and offshoots of the Nation of Islam that began in the mid-‘60s.

He went through names like Kid Wave, Rapper Nas, and Nasty Nas, before simplifying it.

Nas was mentored by producer and rapper Large Professor, one of the founders of the Rap group Main Source.

Large Professor was also an unrelenting editor who would work with Nas on his lyrics until they were on point.

Nasty Nas’ guest verse on the Main Source’s 1991 song, “At the Barbeque” made the unknown rapper a legend of the underground.

It caught the ear of Faith Newman, an A&R person at Columbia Records who tracked him down through his manager, MC Serch from 3rd Bass after Large Professor told her Nas wasn’t ready to make a record. But after listening to the first song on Nas’ demo she wouldn’t let Serch leave without signing him.

Large Professor was supposed to produce the whole record but he was entangled in the messy break up of Main Source so Serch assembled a line up of star producers.

It became one of the first hip-hop records to have multiple producers and still sound like a cohesive album.

“The Illmatic” was densely packed with deft rhymes and detailed narrations that described the gritty and troubled real-life, inner city experiences of poverty, gang-life, drug-dealing, desolation, and desperate dreams of a way out.

That was visualized on the cover, inspired by Howard Hanger’s 1974 Jazz album, “A Child is Born”, which has a childhood photo of Nas superimposed over the Queensbridge Projects.

And that East Coast-styled Gangsta Rap was often backed by the beats and sounds of the then current, Jazz-inspired, Afrocentric, Hip-Hop, by groups like those from the Native Tongues collective.

While working on the record it got bootlegged so the label rush-released it before it was any longer.

So while other Hip-Hop albums often filled out the full data storage size of cds and cassettes and included superfluous sketches and between song banter, “The Illmatic” was inadvertently all killer and no filler.

And coming in at under 40 minutes meant a fan could listen to it multiple times in one go and quickly memorize the songs.

Its title was both a tribute to his friend Illmatic Ice who was incarcerated as well as being, in Nas’ words, "Realness - the epitome of ill.”

Despite debuting at #12 on the charts, selling 63,000 albums in its first week, spawning five singles, and getting great critical reviews the album was considered a disappointment as it took a few years to reach success.

It was still named 1994’s album of the year by Source Magazine.

“The Illmatic” rates as one of, if not the most, influential and loved Hip-Hop albums and with this debut Nas became one of the most revered and respected rappers... and he was only twenty years old.