I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death
Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined
I think of crime when I'm in a New York State of Mind."
Illmatic is the debut album by Nas, released on April 19, 1994 through Columbia Records. A landmark album for both New York hip-hop and the East Coast scene as a whole, it's cited as one of the three major albums that revitalized East Coast hip-hop, alongside Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers and The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die.
After a string of guest spots, and being passed over by Def Jam Recordings, Nas signed on with Columbia Records, and recorded Illmatic from June 1992 to February 1993. The entirety of the album draws from Nas' life growing up in the Queensbridge projects, with vivid and frank descriptions about violence, drug dealing, gang warfare, and the desolate state of Queensbridge from poverty. As Nas would say years later to NPR, "I want you to know who I am: what the streets taste like, feel like, smell like. What the cops talk like, walk like, think like. What crackheads do — I wanted you to smell it, feel it." That said, the album is far from devoid of the usual rap braggadocio, and has moments of optimism ("The World Is Yours"), nostalgia ("Memory Lane (Sittin' In Da Park)"), and tributes to fallen friends who died prior to and during the recording of the album.
Illmatic is also notorious for the heavy bootlegging it went through, something that would continue to plague Nas later in his career. The album was so highly anticipated among the hip-hop community that bootlegs were extremely commonplace, to the point where MC Serch, the album's executive producer, claimed at least one bootlegger had somewhere between 60-70,000 bootleg copies in a garage. Even Tupac Shakur, who had not yet spurned the East Coast, had a bootlegged tape he played in court during his sexual assault trial. The extreme bootlegging forced Nas and Columbia to rush the album out in mid-1994.
The album is also responsible for kickstarting the trend of having multiple "super-producers" on a rap album, which was unprecedented at the time. Pete Rock, Large Professor, Q-Tip, L.E.S., and DJ Premier all contributed to the album, contributing their respective signature sounds while still retaining a cohesive atmosphere and aesthetic. Illmatic has been simultaneously praised and criticized for this, as while it worked to great effect on Nas' album, it led to many other rappers having whole teams of big-name producers on their albums, often leading to an inconsistent sound.
Upon release, Illmatic was critically acclaimed among both critics and the hip-hop community, and it debuted at #12 on the Billboard 200. However, the high bootlegging caused sales to nosedive fairly fast, and it wouldn't reach Gold status until 1996, or Platinum status until 2001. For perspective, Biggie's Ready to Die, released that same year, went Gold in two months, and double Platinum in just over a year.
It's truly impossible to understate just how much of an impact Nas made on hip-hop with Illmatic. Before its release, the West Coast was dominating the charts and airwaves, the rap scene in Queens was all but dead, and Alternative Hip Hop acts like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest were the only acts seeing sustained commercial success on the East Coast. Nas, along with Biggie and the Wu, brought New York's hardcore scene to the mainstream, revived Queens' hip-hop scene, and firmly re-established New York's position in hip-hop in the face of G-Funk's dominance, starting the "East Coast Renaissance". Illmatic is universally cited as Nas' greatest work, a regular contender for the greatest hip-hop album of all time, and an influence on countless other rappers, and was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress in 2021.
No small feat, considering Nas was roughly 16-17 when he recorded the majority of Illmatic.
Tracklist:
40 Side North- "The Genesis" (1:45)
- "N.Y. State of Mind" (4:53)
- "Life's a Bitch" (3:30)
- "The World Is Yours" (4:50)
- "Halftime" (4:20)
41st Side South
- "Memory Lane (Sittin' in da Park)" (4:08)
- "One Love" (5:25)
- "One Time 4 Your Mind" (3:18)
- "Represent" (4:12)
- "It Ain't Hard to Tell" (3:22)
It Ain't Hard to Trope:
- Boastful Rap: "One Time 4 Your Mind" has Nas in full braggadocio mode. No gang or drug problems, no sociopolitical commentary, just bars about a regular day in the life of Nasty Nas, and his escapades.
- Call-Back: "The Genesis" has almost the entirety of Nas' verse from Main Source's "Live from the Barbecue", which was his debut appearance on record.
- Hardcore Hip-Hop: The album that helped redefine hardcore rap, painting an eerily vivid picture of the squalid state of the Queensbridge projects at the time.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: LP and cassette releases are divided between "40 Side North" and "41st Side South."
- The Insomniac: "I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death". In other words, Nas is too scared to properly rest (and rightly so) because a rival could easily kill him while he sleeps, so he's in a constant state of paranoia-fuelled insomnia.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: While he's not entirely devoid of optimism and hope, Nas is still a product of Queenbridge's ruthless streets, and it shows.
- Jazz Rap: Not as overt as some other albums, but the jazz essence is strong on the album, thanks to the choice of samples. "Life's a Bitch" is a more explicit example, featuring Nas' father, jazz musician Olu Dara, playing cornet on the track.
- Libation for the Dead: Referenced at the end of "Memory Lane (Sittin' in da Park)", where Nas says he'll pour out a Heineken for his dead friends.
- Oh, Crap!: The first verse of "N.Y. State of Mind" paints Nas in a gunfight with a rival gang, only for his gun to jam at the worst possible time, forcing a hasty retreat.
- "Gave another squeeze, heard it click, "Yo, my shit is stuck!"
Tried to cock it, it wouldn't shoot, now I'm in danger
Finally pulled it back and saw three bullets caught up in the chamber
So, now I'm jettin' to the buildin' lobby
And it was full of children, prob'ly couldn't see as high as I be."
- Record Producer: As mentioned above, Illmatic started the trend of having several big-name producers on a rap album. Pete Rock, Large Professor, Q-Tip, L.E.S., and DJ Premier all lent a hand on this album, with Nas co-producing some tracks himself.
- Tragic Dropout: Nas is a middle-school drop out, which he acknowledges on "Memory Lane (Sittin' in da Park)". Though he actually dropped out after his parents' divorce, the song indicates he may have been thinking with his other head on doing so.
- Wretched Hive: The album as a whole paints Queensbridge and the greater New York City as this, but "N.Y. State of Mind" is the defining example. Gang warfare, poverty, drug dealers and addicts...
