Nas
Illmatic

THE REVIEW

Illmatic is Nas's debut album and is unanimously considered one of the masterpieces of hip hop music. 

Equipped with an effective flow, the young rapper from Queensbridge (New York) shines on this record particularly for his lyrics, simply superb: the extensive use of metaphors, a much richer vocabulary than the average American rapper, and a great descriptive ability are just some of his qualities. 

But the merit of this album's greatness is not only due to Nas's lyrical talent, but also to the high quality of the music: the beats are crafted by the best New York beatmakers of the time (excluding Rza), namely Dj Premier, Large Professor, Pete Rock, L.E.S., and Q-Tip, who give the entire album a homogeneous (utilizing mostly jazz samples) and non-boring atmosphere. What surprises most is the connection between beat and lyrics.

After the nice intro, the first song is N.Y. State Of Mind, probably the finest rap song about the Big Apple, in which Nas manages to express like no other the tension that permeates New York, naturally the New York of the black ghettos, an anxiety well encapsulated in the line "I never sleep 'cause slippin' is cousin of dead".

Next are two more "calm" yet beautiful songs: Life's A Bitch contains the album's only (but excellent) feature, a verse, and a great chorus by AZ, the subject is still life in the ghetto, and it concludes with the blues trumpet of Olu Dara (Nas's father); in The World Is Yours we see a reflective Nas able to combine poetry and concreteness over Pete Rock's nice beat.

Halftime is self-celebratory but gives great energy, the right prelude to the two songs that represent the emotional peak of the album: Memory Lane, with memorable lines like "my intellect prevails from a hangin cross with nails" and One Love: over a melancholic beat (based on the sampling of Smilin' Billy Suite Pt. II by the Heat Brothers) Nas writes a letter to incarcerated friends, telling how life goes in Queensbridge, with great intensity both lyrically and in flow.

After One Time 4 Your Mind (the least beautiful track of the album), it’s still about the ghetto with Represent but with aggressive yet always elegant verses.

To close, Nas explains to us, over a splendid beat by Large Professor (sampling, among others, Michael Jackson), that it's not hard to tell: It Ain't Hard To Tell, the fitting conclusion to a masterpiece.