― Ben Williams, Monday, 14 October 2002 18:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
a) The lyrics. He introduced a new level of realism (exaggerated or not) to hip-hop. You already mentioned that a while back. "A feeling like 'he's taking it to what hip-hop was about at the start' except of course he's taking it someplace new" is exactly it.b) The flow. Really, his rhymes are very tightly coiled. You could strip the beats away and still hear the rhythms.c) The voice. He projects authority (also, to me, one of the reasons why Rakim was great) and he enunciates very clearly. Every word is hard and direct.d) Production. It doesn't hurt to have a great setting to shine in. All the "great MCs" have had that, I think.
I mean, what more do you want?
― Ben Williams, Monday, 14 October 2002 18:36 (twenty-one years ago) link
once again, to restate:his imagery is sharp.his themes are complex and don't belittle the subject matter.his flows sync with the beatthe rhymes and internal rhythms, at the time, were pretty revolutionary.his analogies are sharp and fitting for the subject matter.there's a hunger and authenticity in his voice. if you don't hear this, then you are one of few.
― S, Monday, 14 October 2002 18:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― boxcubed (boxcubed), Monday, 14 October 2002 18:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
What I guess I'm missing from Nas is a sense of narrative flow, or any real relation between the stories he tells and the flow of his lyrics, or any sense that his stories have any distinct structure. Also anything not utterly conventional and boring in his rhythms.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 14 October 2002 18:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
Are "hunger" and "authenticity" anything like "soul"? coz I can't hear that either.
Also: a neophyte?
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 14 October 2002 18:49 (twenty-one years ago) link
But leaving that aside, what is a "relation between the stories he tells and the flow of his lyrics"?
― Ben Williams, Monday, 14 October 2002 18:56 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ben Williams, Monday, 14 October 2002 18:58 (twenty-one years ago) link
if you think busta just shouts we'll never see eye-to-eye on this.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 14 October 2002 19:02 (twenty-one years ago) link
― boxcubed (boxcubed), Monday, 14 October 2002 19:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
Re: Nas' narrative structure. I'd argue that it isn't essential for a hip hop lyricist to present their stories in a linear, narrative fashion. Although there are those that do (and you mentioned a few of them), i think that it's perfectly acceptable for Nas' to paint a mosaic of his life and environment. Nas presents conflict, action, and possible resolutions. To my ears, Illmatic is nearly flawless.
also, i don't think that you're taking into account that illmatic was recorded ages ago (in relative hip hop ) and Nas pioneered many of the lyrical templates that you see as boring or conventional.
BTW, Nas' capacity for a linear narrative is one of the few things that improved after Illmatic, in my opinion.
― S, Monday, 14 October 2002 19:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Chris Ryan (chrisryan), Monday, 14 October 2002 20:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
On Illmatic, I just love the sound of his voice rolling down those samples. I'm not sure what's so striking about it, especially with all the different producers, which is usually the kiss of dud. Something about his blank stare in the lyrics gets you. Something about the Rakim-gray you find so boring: not cool, more just... cold. Sounds like a fall day in New York.
― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 15 October 2002 21:01 (twenty-one years ago) link
Always I'm in some shit, my abdomen is the clipThe barrel is my dick, uncircumcisedPull my skin back and cock me, I bust off when they unlock meResults of what happens to niggaz shock meI see niggaz bleedin, runnin from me in fear, stunningly tearsfall down the eyes of these so-called tough guys, for yearsI've been used in robberies, givin niggaz heart to follow mePlacin peoples in graves, funerals made cause I was sprayedI was laid in a shelf, with a grenadeMet a wrecked-up tech with numbers on his chest that say Five-two-oh-nine-three-eight-five and zeroHad a serial defaced, hopin one day, police would placewhere he came from, a name or some sort of person to claim himTired of murderin, made him wanna be a plain gunBut yo I had some other plans, like the next time the beef is onI make myself jam right in my owner's hand
(Chorus)
Yo, weeks went by and I'm surprisedStill stuck in the shelf with all the things that an outlaw hidesBesides me it's bullets, two vests and then a nineThere's a grenade in a box, and that tech that kept cryinCause he ain't been cleaned in a year, he's rusty as clearHe's bout to fall to pieces, cause of his murder careerYo, I can hear somebody comin in, open the shelfHis eyes bubblin, he said, "It was on"I felt his palm troubled him shakinSomebody stomped him out, his dome was achinHe placed me on his waist, the moment I've been waitinMy creation was for blacks to kill blacksIt's gats like me that accidentally go off, makin niggaz memoriesBut this time, it's done intentionallyHe walked me outside, saw this catCocked me back, said, "Remember me?"He pulled the trigger but I held on, it felt wrongKnowing niggaz is waiting in hell for 'imHe squeezed harder, I didn't budge, sick of the bloodSick of the thugs, sick of wrath of the next man's grudgeWhat the other kid did was pull out, no doubtA newer me in better shape, before he lit out, he led the chaseMy owner fell to the floor, his wig split so fastI didn't know he was hit, it's over withHeard mad niggaz screamin, niggaz runnin, cops is cominNow I'm happy, until I felt somebody else grab meDamn!
― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 15 October 2002 21:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 15 October 2002 21:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
I put Illmatic on last night and decided I don't love it but I do like it. I like it because it's great background music - unless I'm concentrating hard I hardly notice Nas or the beats, it all meshes together too perfectly to engage with me but perfectly enough for me to never find the experience un-enjoyable. I think what Sterling(?) was saying upthread about it being the basic hip-hop album, like a re-founding of hip-hop, holds true. It's like if you asked somebody to imagine what generic "hip-hop" sounds like they might well think of something like Illmatic in the same way as someone asked what "jazz" sounds like might well think of Kind Of Blue. It's an album so strong it can stand for all albums - which is its advantage and disadvantage.
(Exception - those sing-songy choruses annoyed me this time.)
― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 15 October 2002 21:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
It's funny, but teachers actually are assigning out a lot of hip hop homework...
― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 15 October 2002 21:42 (twenty-one years ago) link
I'm getting visions of Nas doing a modified "I'm a little teapot" dance. Too cute.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 16 October 2002 04:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
Hip-hop is a culture obsessed with heroes, and whether they are the result of manufacturing or earnest hard work, they are rarely as immovable as they think. A culture whose music and approach assume a short attention span necessarily treats its stars the same way, and the debate about hip-hop's truly untouchable names would be a relatively short one. The days of Nas' undisputed spot atop that dawg-pile may be long gone, but he will always have his place in the discussion, not simply as a gifted lyricist, but as a prodigy.
Nas came into our world fully formed, first as a snot-nosed upstart who nonchalantly bragged that he "went to hell for snuffing Jesus" back when he was twelve, then as a twenty-year-old counting stacks with his partner AZ on "The Genesis," the weightily-named introduction to his debut, Illmatic. There are no moments of vulnerability on the album, no rags to put the riches of today in proper perspective. He arrives as a manchild in a broken land: a man because there is no childishness or uncertainty in his pose but a child because it is so obviously and precisely a pose and, as with many who inherit a precocious brain but a plain heart, he relies more on instinct and response than emotional certainty, conviction or stability. It was as though the questions one wrestles in youth (idealism, material, morality, "the future")-the mortal world-didn't matter, for Nas arrived immortal.
As such, Illmatic is fearless, shocking and literally unbelievable. There was a brazenness to Nas' "understandable smooth," Yeah-I-said-it delivery, a cool absence of thought or hope (maybe both), and whether he was indeed the journal or the journalist, there were few images as crisp and brags as cold as his. I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death. Cause I'm as ill as a convict who kills for phone time. I rap in front of more ni**az than on the slave ships. On "One Love," his description of an over-anxious, would-be young thug from around the way-"Shorty's laugh was cold-blooded as he spoke so foul/Only twelve trying to tell me that he liked my style/Then I rose, wiping the blunt's ash from my clothes/Then froze, only to blow the herb smoke through my nose"-wasn't just a dope rap lyric; it was an amazing piece of writing, regardless of age.
Through it all, Nas himself seems to seek very little in the exchange. If he is to be believed, he was already very rich, and though he would later try and refashion himself as a martyr-in-progress, on Illmatic he seemed too young and jaded to care much about any end, because in the end, nothing happens. Life's a bitch, as his song goes, but then what? Do you find redemption in ether? Philosophy? Do you pray for a merciful God? No. Life's a bitch and then you die, and the only thing Nas seems to believe in is the grace of falling. Religion clearly doesn't matter ("Cause yeah, we were beginners in the hood as five-percenters/But somethin' must of got in us cause all of us turned to sinners" from AZ's verse on "Life's a Bitch") and when Nas boasts that he "loves committin' sins" ("Represent"), you almost believe him.
Almost because there's still something behind Nas' eternally negative, harum-scarum worldview-not fear, but a dim consciousness of his own status as immortal. It is the belief that, though we may not live to see tomorrow, someone will. And, with history as our witness, we better seem pretty fucking fly to them. On Illmatic, Nas cared less about his place in God's eyes than his place in history, and history alone provided young Nas with a sense of salvation; a sense that the depravity surrounding him would one day be enshrined as the conditions for his genius. The album, like the man himself, excels because it is obsessed with the bright, fawning legacy that trails faithfully behind. He says as much on "Nas is Like," a song he wrote during the Illmatic sessions: "But what's it all worth? Can't take it with you under this Earth/Rich men died and tried, but none of it worked/They just rob your grave, I'd rather be alive and paid/Before my number's called, history's made."
There's something alluring and inevitably unsatisfying about seeing someone so nihilistic go about life, especially at such a young age. You can say you want to (or will) die before you get old, but those words feel cheap and flat when you live just cautious enough to survive well into your late-20s and early-30s. When you grow up against the anti-philosophy you lay out in the dim idealism of youth, you go from old school to old fool, and somewhere along the way, old Nas realized that he wanted redemption. He thought he would find it by earning the plaques and sales that he rightfully deserved, refashioning himself as a pretty thug and then again as the champion for the masses, finding solidarity with lesser cliques (Bravehearts, Murder Inc.) and beefing with Jay-Z, the man who took the best parts of Nas' blueprint and gave it both corporate and heartfelt dimensions. But nothing worked, and these muted expressions of fear only served to make Illmatic seem that much more unbelievable. As a kid, Nas didn't fear God; he just thought he was better, and he wanted people to know that tomorrow. Unfortunately that next day came, and the boy who was ahead of his time grew into a man forever captive to it.
― bringinupoldshit, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 04:46 (twenty years ago) link
― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 05:46 (twenty years ago) link
Sterling - look, don't bully people into insisting why Illmatic is the shit. I'm not going to insult you if you don't believe it is but you seem to have this chip on your shoulder to dislike Illmatic to the point where you're ridiculing people's civil attempts at suggesting that maybe the album is actually pretty good.
Why not just chalk this up to "I'm not feeling it" and leave it at that? This complaint of yours that Nas' songs have no structural relationship between content and flow reminds me musicology students I've come across who seem more intent on dissecting the mechanics of a song rather than talk about their emotive affect. The two aren't mutually exclusive but one shouldn't need to justify either a like or dislike of a song or artist based on its structural qualities anymore than one should judge a painting solely based on its brush work.
YOU DON'T LIKE NAS. Ok, we heard you the first time, but goading people into proving you wrong is a waste of both people's time. You're clearly defiantly intractable in your position.
For the record - I'm not a huge Nas fan, mostly for many of the reasons Hua points out - dude has squandered his talents time and time again and I find Nas' acolytes to be a funny bunch of believers who continue to insist he can do no wrong despite having made a catalog's worth of shitty songs. That said, Illmatic is firmly planted on my top 10 list of all-time great hip-hop albums for all the reasons that people have already stated and if people disagree, that's cool with me.
Frankly, I'm not feeling the Streets and you know why? I can't hang with his accent and no amount of lyrical analysis can overcome that bias on my part. I guess now I'm being defiantly intractable. :)
--Oliver
― Oliver Wang (Oliver Wang), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 11:10 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 14:22 (twenty years ago) link
― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 17:21 (twenty years ago) link
― raoul, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 17:28 (twenty years ago) link
The first thread on this board ever, back in 2000 (or late 99?) was Tom "provoking" ppl into defending emo.
This board has a long long history of exactly this sort of discussion, and its always been when it works out one of its strengths.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 17:28 (twenty years ago) link
― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 17:35 (twenty years ago) link
― Keith Harris (kharris1128), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 17:59 (twenty years ago) link
Sterling...where do you stand on Illmatic now? Has it changed for you?
― bringinupoldshit, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 18:19 (twenty years ago) link
― angel duster, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 20:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Oliver Wang (Oliver Wang), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 20:30 (twenty years ago) link
i like illmatic a lot but it sounds old and soft to me. that lyrical style everyone says they like is all over the next seven albums. he's not perfect (five mics for stillmatic didn't make any sense because it kind of sucks), but lyrically, pretty much everything else he did kills illmatic badly. it's almost like people enjoy the philosophy or something of illmatic more than anything else or maybe the idea of it, the whole reactionary, tired dullness of it. like, "damn, why'd this guy hook up with hot producers and get hot rappers on his shit and step his lyrical game way up when he could have remade illmatic a million times???"
― cloverlandthug, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 20:58 (twenty years ago) link
I'm not saying Nas is irredeemable but Jay-Z had it right - Nas' consistency is pretty far off, at least in my opinion, and the only people who really seem to go to bat for him (yourself excluded) are precisely kids who fell in love with Illmatic and keep desperately hoping that he comes back to that.
In other news, there are rumors that Columbia is planning on doing a remix version of "Illmatic." 10 producers for each of the 10 songs. Hot or not?
― Oliver Wang (Oliver Wang), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:12 (twenty years ago) link
I like Hua's essay lots but it sorta misses the "uplift" side that ppl get from him which was there well before "I Can" and also I'm a bit skittish about the teleology reading Illmatic as a prophecy of future downfall or something. Something in nas' "there-i-said-it delivery" (great line) implies to some people at least, some sort of spiritual redemption in itself -- not quite the seamless valorization of a fall from grace. I've been listening to Illmatic less than ever, really and don't even think I've unpacked it after my move this summer. But I thought of Nas recently when I thought of the trying-too-hard-teen-poetry quality of the Pac verses on the Biggie duet.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:14 (twenty years ago) link
Explain what is reactionary, tired and dull about Illmatic. Other than the fact that there is a consensus of opinion about it, which obviously bothers you.
― just saying, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:23 (twenty years ago) link
it's still a great album and i love nas.
― cloverlandthug, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:42 (twenty years ago) link
― cloverlandthug, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:44 (twenty years ago) link
It's great but it's dull? Say what?
And how are you drawing on the consensus dissenting opinion in your critcism of the "reactionary" consensus? I'm confused.
― ben welsh (benwelsh), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:53 (twenty years ago) link
I like Illmatic very much. I also like early 90s hip-hop production style. I like old funk and soul music, and I like when producers sample it.
― just saying, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:54 (twenty years ago) link
Dear fucking GOD. Kill me now. I don't want to live on the same earth as someone who can say this without feeling physically ill.
― e-factor, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:55 (twenty years ago) link
― ben welsh (benwelsh), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:56 (twenty years ago) link
the hua hsu thing is the differentest thing i've ever seen written about it and most of the stuff he likes about it is all over the other albums, too.
― cloverlandthug, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 21:59 (twenty years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:11 (twenty years ago) link
I have read people saying that he never did anything as good as Illmatic, and that he went in a different direction musically because he wanted to sell more records. Is that what you mean?
I notice you're arguing that his lyrics got better. I haven't listened closely enough to tell. But what about the music? Did that get better? I don't think so, personally.
― just saying, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:13 (twenty years ago) link
― djdee2005, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:18 (twenty years ago) link
anyway what the fuck is "perspective" worth? this is mark s' point about how rockism fails on its OWN terms. If you value long-term critical perspective then you can't retreat to rad-subjective "i like it coz it makes me feel happy" simultaneously & what does it say that yr. leaping to assumptions about who heard what when anyway?
why does it make you feel euphoric? which lines do? what do they remind you of, how is the delivery especially effective? is it a euphoria like sniffing ether or like drinking red wine or like getting a backrub? what are you afraid of?
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:25 (twenty years ago) link
Besides what everyone else has said, the beats make me happy. I love the sound of the production, the way it all comes together. I love how Nas voice sounds, I love the lyrics because I can envision virtually everything he says, I love it because of its cinematic imagery, the darkness present in it, and I enjoy it because it is exquisite music. Frankly, I think the burden is on YOU to provide reasoning for why you hate it beyond this bizarre "I find it boring" argument.
It seems like you are just trying to be provacative here...I just plain enjoy listening to the album on its own terms. It is one of the few albums that I listen to with ANY regularity - the others being Organized Konfusion's "Stress" and Biggie's "Ready To Die" and Mingus' "Black Saint" and "Mingus x5" and Miles Davis' "Porgy and Bess" and "Astral Weeks" by V Morrison...I just plain LOVE listening to it; its as near to perfection as any music I have ever heard.
― djdee2005, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:33 (twenty years ago) link
― just saying, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:44 (twenty years ago) link
― djdee2005, Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:47 (twenty years ago) link
― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 28 January 2004 22:52 (twenty years ago) link
im becoming a member of the NSO so i can get in on the pre-sale of this... feeling i might regret it... hope AZ shows up for his one verse
― phil-two, Sunday, 3 November 2013 10:34 (ten years ago) link
i've listened to this album a lot and loved it over the years but it always struck me how bad a lot of the answers were to sterl's provocations itt
like, yeah obviously there's lots of realistic detail and poetic facility in the lyrics but they're very hard to follow as narratives (not just because of nas's delivery), and you can only sell nas as a storyteller here if you try to get by on attitude instead of on like mid-career ghostface creative writing workshop storycraft
it struck me recently that ralph waldo emerson is conventionally faulted for some things related to things nas is faulted for. his writing is supposedly full of these intense gems that hang together in this entrancing way that has a tendency to seem like a tangle of empty rhetoric and attitude upon reflection, and his thought is supposedly kind of foolishly/blindly optimistic, in neglect of the facts. but the better things people write about emerson notice his continual oscillating between despair and hope, and his effort to find a way of, basically, being believable about the latter in the face of the former. so his writing is really self-conscious and concerned with its quality of consciousness, and unstable because it's trying to keep these seemingly opposed things in a kind of productive tension.
the knock against nas would be his nihilism instead of his optimism, but he has that same sort of all-encompassing ambition to take in all of life and the world at once, to be self-possessed in the face of it. and his lyrics are so complicated because they're pivoting all over the place between attitudes and frames of mind in response to the narrative details and the reminisces (lots of them for a 20-year-old!) and to nas's own attempts to be this idealist transparent-eyeball mc. and like emerson, super preoccupied with thinking/writing representatively so as to articulate something universal out of a local, everyday experience that people are usually dismissive of.
in other words hua hsu = star post itt
― j., Thursday, 24 April 2014 20:33 (ten years ago) link
http://twitchfilm.com/2014/04/tribeca-2014-review-time-is-illmatic-an-illuminating-look-back-at-the-creation-of-a-hip-hop-classic.html#ixzz301ZK548s
Embedded in Nas' dark street tales are notes of optimism and hope, with the ultimate message to his listeners being, "I made it out of this alive, and so can you." A late scene that shows the announcement of a fellowship at Harvard named in his honor promoting hip-hop scholarship emphasizes this. Unlike most of the neighborhood folks whose photos were used for Illmatic's album cover art, Nas was able to escape the fates of death or prison, and Time Is Illmatic ultimately becomes a moving testimonial to how music literally saved Nas' life.
― j., Monday, 28 April 2014 21:32 (ten years ago) link
for me now, production is stone cold classic, but i never did really connect with the lyrics.
no contrarianism i do like some of the more animated delivery of other rappers way over nas' style here. did we ever discuss elzhi and elmatic? i'm not gonna say its better than illmatic, but i def enjoy listening to it more, maybe just because it feels fresher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHBdH8aj5Co
― wat is teh waht (s.clover), Monday, 28 April 2014 22:36 (ten years ago) link
http://emoji.fileformat.info/gemoji/corn.png
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Monday, 28 April 2014 23:05 (ten years ago) link
jfc
― dollar rave club (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 28 April 2014 23:07 (ten years ago) link
ez rock just died i'm gonna put up with this shit
lol the streets
― How dare you tarnish the reputation of Turturro's yodel (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 28 April 2014 23:19 (ten years ago) link