Nas' Illmatic

33⅓ Main Series #64

by Matthew Gasteier

Contradiction, the yin and the yang, the simultaneous existence of two competing realities, and the larger than life persona that depicts populist realism are at the core of Nas's debut album, Illmatic. Yet Nas's identity -as an inner-city youth, a child of hip-hop, and a Black American - predicts those philosophical quandaries as much as it does its brazen ambition. Partly because of that recklessly broad scope, the artistic impact of Illmatic was massive. The record finds its place in the greatest transition in hip hop up to that point, the spot where the streets and the charts collided.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Hip Hop, Biography

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2009

About the author

Matthew Gasteier is the creator of the popular blog, fupenguin.com, which is the basis for this book. He lives in Watertown, Massachusetts. Some of his best friends are penguins.

Reviews

[Ben Winch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite that I consider Nas my favourite rapper, generally I'm distrustful of anyone who says Illmatic is their favourite rap album. Why? For one thing, everyone seems to be saying it these days, from rock to rap fans; for another, few of them (especially rock fans) have bothered to listen to the rest of Nas's catalogue, parroting the righteous party line that after his first album he 'went gangsta' and ceased to say anything meaningful or realistic. Me, I'll take his second album, It Was Written, over Illmatic any day, because the beats are fresher, starker, darker, and because I don't buy the line that Nas was ever saying anything all that deep to begin with. I mean, sure he was, the way he always does - mixed in with the random stream-of-consciousness there's always nuggets of meaning. But from the moment the teenage Nas spat his few bars on 'Live at the BBQ' he was hyperbolic:

Street's disciple, my rap's a trifle
I shoot slugs from my brain just like a rifle...

Kidnap the President's wife without a plan
I'm hangin' n____s like the Klu Klux Klan.

Check the the first track on Illmatic, 'NY State of Mind':

N____s be runnin' through the block shootin'
Time to start the revolution...
Once they caught us off guard
The Mach 10 was in the grass and
I ran like a cheetah with thoughts of an assassin
Picked the Mach up, told brothers back up, the Mach spit
Lead was hittin' n____s, one ran, I made a backflip
Heard a few chicks scream, my arms shook, couldn't look
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 building lobby
And it was full of children probably couldn't see as high as I be
(So what you sayin'?)
It's like the game ain't the same
You got younger n____s pullin' the triggers, bringin' fame to their name...

Pretty tight, huh? And if it weren't for the backflip and the apparent confession that he shot a few guys with a Mach 10, I guess you could call it a kind of realism. But quickly enough he's back to his usual tricks:

Been having dreams that I'm a gangsta
Drinkin' Moet, holdin' Techs
Makin' sure the cash came correct...

And did I mention how he starts it?

I'm like Scarface sniffin' cocaine, holdin' the M16
See, with the pen I'm extreme...

Truth is, it's that 'with the pen I'm extreme' that saves him. 'Slugs from my brain just like a rifle' - it's a metaphor, duh! He dreams he's a gangsta. Yeah, by It Was Written the exaggeration is in full force, but in the very shamelessness of it is a sort of honesty. Nas doesn't want you to think he's some drug kingpin, nor does he want you to see a literal truth in a rhyme like:

Rap hero, black De Niro
Federal Bureau tapped my line and got zero.

You put on It Was Written and you're enveloped by a fictional world much like that of the Hype Williams film Belly, Nas's only starring role that I'm aware of, his only screenwriting gig too. It's a modern noir, set to rap and R&B, with a super-stylised look supplied by music-video director Williams that is designed to be anything but realistic. The thing is, Nas is still dreaming, and the further he goes the less he feels the need to remind you he knows it.

I never brag how real I keep it
Cos it's the best secret.

Realism? It puzzles me that half the people who deride gangsta rap for lacking realism are fans of crime novels and Hollywood blockbusters. Raymond Chandler's motto for those suffering writer's block: have a guy with a gun come through the door. So how is this different to Nas's dropping a gun into the flow whenever it threatens to dry up? Shit, in 'I Gave You Power' he even casts himself as the gun:

My body is cold steel for real
I was made to kill
That's why they keep me concealed under car-seats
They sneak me in clubs
Been in the hands of mad thugs
They feed me when they load me with mad slugs
Seventeen precisely, one in my head
They call me Desert Eagle, semi-auto with lead...

How you like me now?
I go 'blaw'
It's that shit that moves crowds
Makin' every ghetto foul
I mighta took your first child
Scarred your life, crippled your style
I gave you power, I made you buck wild...

But yo I had some other plans
Like the next time the beef is on I make myself jam
Right in my owner's hands...

You don't think that's as powerful and real, in its own way, as anything on Illmatic? That's experimental! It's out there. But he means it.

Besides which, I don't know how many people realise it, but to conjure words at speed to music is a hard thing. Nas has the flow; he raps as if he's been rapping all his life, in parks and on streetcorners and in the schoolyard and on the subway. The point isn't that everything you spit be autobiographical, but that it be natural, that it come from the rhythm of your breath and your heart and not somebody else's. The violent subject matter, that's something that's circulated, become part of the back-and-forth between rappers, part of the tradition. Yeah it's gotten out of hand these days, and even some rappers themselves seem to have forgotten the humour, but fuck this anti-gangsta orthodoxy that's grown up in response! I just love the best gangsta albums (The Infamous Mobb Deep, All Eyez on Me, Life After Death) the way I love a good Chandler or Chester Himes novel, or a great Hollywood thriller, unrealistic and violent though they all may be.

Illmatic? Yeah, it's good, the first half especially, and 'One Love' (the famous letter-to-a-friend-in-prison lyric) really is something close to the revolutionary social realism that the rest of the album is purported to be. But try The Infamous Mobb Deep - now that is a contender for greatest rap album for real, and if you're going around trumpeting Illmatic without even having listened to the Mobb (who came out of the same Queensbridge projects Nas immortalised) then you're missing out.

And the book? It's OK - not jam-packed with information but it puts the album in context, sticks to the facts and doesn't treat it too reverentially.

Nas, baby - King of New York. Oh yeah, and fuck Jay-Z. Eminem murdered him on his own shit, after all.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can tell when someone really really loves what they do.

Writer, Matthew Gasteier is someone who really loves hip hop, but is real as fuck and honest about his place as a voyeur of the culture. I really appreciated his viewpoint and the fact that he really jumped down into the nooks and crannies of this legendary record and delivered all the pertinent information regarding Nas and the state of the culture at the time.

I like that Nas didn’t give anything to this book because I think there’s an element of true artistry in just letting things take shape, allowing people’s visions/interpretations of your work to breathe without adding any post-op care into the fold.

I read this book on a short plane ride and wasn’t bored by it, not once. I felt no need to escape it. There were a few errors here and there but the overall crux of it was perfect. A great contribution to the 33 1/3 series and a great look into a legendary album.

[Jerome Spencer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love this album and it’s obvious Matthew Gasteier does, too. It’s just that our experiences are wildly different. I would have loved to read about that actual making of this album with some insight from some of the creators. While Gasteier pulls some quotes from past interviews with Nas in various publications, this book is mostly the author’s pseudo-intellectual pondering into what Nas meant to say. And it’s just kind of pointless and misguided.
It’s really just some random person’s thesis on another man’s art. There are some pretty big stretches in this book; quoting Nas’ work from a decade later to imply some type of foreshadowing to a verse penned by a 19 year old. Gasteier wants Nas to be some kind of prophet and refuses to just let Illmatic be a good, pure street record. Simply put, he gives this classic album the overwrought, white professor treatment. To make matters worse, Gasteier takes to sh*tting on other rap albums to drive his point across; making it painfully obvious that he doesn’t really even like hip hop. He’s just one of those intellectual dudes at a party that knows a few Nas verses and thinks we should all listen to his long-winded opinions rather than enjoy the music.

[Ravachol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I share the sentiment of the majority, that Illmatic is the greatest rap record ever recorded. Not because each song is flawless, or because Nas is the greatest emcee of all-time, but because it is the perfect representation of a time, a place, a life, a feeling. There is no filler, no flash, nothing except what absolutely needs to be there.

The best records, in my view, are always the ones that have context. You can imagine the artist in their environment, piecing the songs together and you can imagine what it felt like to be there, then. This is why I've always felt like well-polished, over-production kind of takes that away from an album. You'll get no polish with Illmatic. You can hear the streets loud and clear, the 90's loud and clear, Queensbridge loud and clear. You can also see it, like a painting, even though you were never there. That's a perfect album.

Reading this conjured up memories of my young-adulthood, when my friends and I were doing our best to get into trouble so we could feel like we were some facsimile of our favorite rappers. It was the dumbest phase I ever went through, and yet the nostalgia washes up all the same. I've spent the past few days with nothing but Nas lyrics repeating in my head. It's amazing how well I remember these verses, that in the past 20 years, I've only listened to on occasional binges of reminiscence.

I'm glad there exists a book about Illmatic, and I appreciate all of the pages of information I was able to nerd out on. This was a sentimental reading experience for me, but all of that being said, I'm sorry but Matthew Gasteier is not the one. Not the right lens for this, not the right voice. Which may have been forgivable if it had been better written but yeah, it wasn't. Not a five mic read.

[Are Kjeldsberg Skauby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Selv om æ ikke har særlig personlig forhold til albumet va det her uforventa dårlig skriving og Nas fortjene faktisk bedre. Skjønne at Large Professor ikke villa bidra til det køddet her, og det e litt trist:/
Bra album da, ska'kke stå på det hehe ....
To stjerna bare på grunn av et par decent kapittel her og der:)

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deep like The Shining, sparkle like a diamond
Sneak a Uzi on the island in my army jacket linin'
Hit the Earth like a comet—invasion!
Nas is like the Afrocentric Asian: half-man, half-amazin'
🤯🤯🤯

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"That's what I think about when I hear that album. I was too young to be going through all that." -Nas, on "Illmatic"

It's a great record-- you don't need me to tell you this-- and Matthew Gasteier probably does the best he could do in analyzing it, being a white man who did not get new interviews from some of the most significant shapers of the album (including Nas himself, but also Large Professor). Though he's never fawning (I hate fawning), the point of Gasteier's book is to demonstrate, in as many ways as a hundred pages can, just how "Illmatic" retains its hold on us some twenty-five years down the line. (btw, 1994 = best music year ever) He sets up each chapter with a contradiction ("Death/Survival," "Faith/Despair"), and proceeds to show how Nas interrogates and finally explodes each of his themes, both with with words and music.

I think what he does best, and what therefore Nas does best, is situate the album in its time and place. Though "Illmatic" is a triumph, the thing that makes it so very special to me is its profound... melancholy... How it alternates between a sense of infinite possibility and an awareness of American society's epic limitations. You are in awe of Nas's ability-- you are in awe of Nas being in awe of his own ability-- and yet, "Illmatic" makes you keenly conscious that this ability was forged out of poverty, racism, inequality, violence, oppression, crime, etc.

I will concede, however, that album just sounds, like, really fucking good. Gasteier writes about music the way I like my music writing: from an educated, skeptical fan's perspective. He makes you even more conscious of Nas's art... When I finished his book, I felt a real sense of gratitude toward him, toward Nas, and toward all the people who labored to make this moving, ageless record.

[Chris Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Gasteier addresses the elephant in the room up top (why is a white guy writing the 33 1/3 entry on Illmatic?) and then spends the rest of the book proving he’s more than up to the job. A rich and insightful dive into arguably the best hip hop album of all time. There’s a lot of very perceptive writing here, and it’s a joy to read.

[Will Aglinskas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I guess I went into this book with the wrong idea of what it was. I was hoping for a deep dive into the making of an album I enjoy from a great rapper— instead I got an opinion piece about the meaning behind the music. There were spelling and grammar mistakes in the books, which is nothing I can’t look past but surprising. I understood what the author was talking about, but I feel like the importance of the music was maybe a little overblown? I mean, Illmatic is a great album. Obviously. But the greatest rap record of all time? Because of what Nas was talking about at 19? I don’t know, man.
As I said above, I started this book because I wanted to know about the makings of the album. I was hoping for some interviews, maybe; something I couldn’t get from the internet. I did not get that. All of the information that isn’t opinionated comes from other interviews which was incredibly disappointing.
I suppose I wanted more about the music than the man, which I’m pretty sure is not unreasonable considering the book is titled “Illmatic” and not “Nas.” Oh well. I hope that I enjoy the next book in this series more.

[Dkettmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am very much enjoying this series, and this one is no exception. I had heard a recent podcast on the samples of Illmatic and was well primed to choose this 33 1/3 book to read next. I was not letdown. If you are interested in one of the greatest rap albums of its time, or arguably any time, this will take you through it and you will appreciate it even more.

[Jonny Brick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aside from a couple of horrid typographical errors towards this end, this is excellent in putting the album in context. After biography and a textual reading, we hear from sonic masterminds like DJ Premier who can vouch for Nas's brilliance. I don't think we need the opening apologia ('I am white') but modern music criticism is all about privilege.

[DURTY]

smooth

[Jitte Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read!

[Kevin McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[S Booksworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was good

[Matt Neal · Rating 4 out of 5]

4) This book is largely an analysis of Nas's honest, gritty, and infamous lyrics and their inspirations and effects from and on hip hop culture and beyond. Going in with no expectations other than my read of "Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (a similar book in the same series), I found that much less interview content was used as opposed to 'Twisted Fantasy', in favor of excerpts from the record, which I found to much better suit any reference to the album, given Nas's extreme lyrical prowess. No discernible 'propaganda' was found, and even touchy subjects such as race and death were handled with care and intelligence; the author sometimes swerving off deep into said subjects, only to arrive the unknowing reader back at the foot of the album's messages in order to demonstrate influence and connections. I found to be the points and analysis thoughtful and rare, always supporting with a lyric thrown in to the sentence which happens to quite recreate the atmosphere found in Illmatic.

5) This book raves about Nas's ability to express the duality of man (or, rather, the duality of a struggling black man) so much that, typing this, I'm beginning to question the possibility of bias. He highlights Nas's strengths and weaknesses (along with most other subjects in the book) with a positive attitude, perhaps to better draw out the positive messages hidden in often harsh rhymes on Illmatic. Readers who enjoy the record and want to learn more about its influence and influences will be quite happy with this read, and there is plenty for seasoned listeners who would like a fresh take on the themes discussed on the album.

[Rob Harvilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illmatic might seem limited in its scope to a small four- or five-block radius, but from the specific comes the universal. The contradictions of the album exist everywhere, and the honesty and specificity of them rings true on a universal level because people recognize their own truth in other peoples' truths. Nas's human struggle is the struggle of a teenager stepping into manhood, an artist coming into his own, and an oppressed citizen breaking free from his chains. These individual triumphs mirror the triumphs of the community, just as their youthful ambitions reflect the collective experience. When it is done properly, the personal can be applied indiscriminately.

The man that Nas became on Illmatic would seem fearless if he wasn't so often open about his doubts. His artistic output might seem miraculous if he didn't so frequently offer a window into his process. But he does these things because Nas is nothing if not honest and open as an artist, and this vulnerability leads fans to relate to him in ways they cannot with similar rappers. It's hard to imagine following in the footsteps of Biggie and Jay when listening to Ready to Die or Reasonable Doubt. Their personas are kings, unstoppable legends on the street, the '80s action-movie stars to Nas's flawed independent-film protagonist. The later debuts seem more in line with the traditional gangster persona, the NWA soldier / heroes that listeners viewed with awe and respect. Nas's revolution is in refusing to glorify or demonize, instead creating a realistic—and therefore sympathetic and universally recognizable—autobiographical portrait.

[Ugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Illmatic the book helped me to understand why Illmatic the album has been such a favourite of mine (and everybody else) for so long now. If I'd ever sat and thought about it, I probably would have said Nas's intelligent lyrics and the album's blending of the bleak, the hopeful and the nostalgic. But Gasteier also talks about how Illmatic marries Nas's highly personal experiences with universal themes (think of the song titles: The Genesis, The World is Yours, etc), how Nas's lyrics are representational rather than judgemental, how they combine braggadocio with lament, etc. On top of which, Gasteier spoke to some of the key people involved, most notably DJ Premier, and gives you an overview not only of Nas's history and where hip hop was at when Illmatic was made, but also a brief walkthrough of each track and how it came together.

The book isn't perfect: Nas, Large Professor and Pete Rock all declined to be interviewed, and there's a small touch of repetitiveness here and there. But it's an intelligent, lively, informed read about one of the best albums ever made, and most importantly it does justice to that album. Representin', it's Illmatic...

[Dusty Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one started off a bit rocky. The introduction spends a lot of time talking about the author's own experiences with hip-hop, particularly as a white guy. It worried me that this would be the tone of the whole book, but it actually serves more as a disclaimer or author's note than interconnected with the rest of the book. Once it gets going, it's all about Nas. Each chapter centers on a different dichotomy within the record and Nas/his career. The quotes from the producers do a great job of painting a picture of not just the record's birth but of its legacy. Everything in the book is built around explaining the different pieces in context of then and now, which is really the best way I could imagine doing a Nas book. Even the track-by-track breakdown in the end feels like it gives greater depth than the typical "this is what I think about each song" that comes up in many 33 1/3 books. It's a quick read that doesn't totally demystify the record, but it at least gives a more in-depth look at the enigma that is Nas.

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good little book for a bit of background on Nas and his debut album Illmatic which is considered to be one of (if not THE) greatest album in hiphop history.

Having been a Nas fan for a long time I didn't learn too much from this book that I wasn't already aware of however I think it is worth a read anyway.

There were no actual interviews with Nas done specifically for writing this book but even so it was very thorough and I especially liked the breakdown of each track which featured towards the back of the book.

I am hoping to read the 33 1/3 book about J Dilla / Donuts soon as that has just been released.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of "arguably the greatest album," "arguably the greatest rapper," and other hedged appeals to meaningless critical rankings. And like a lot of hip-hop journalism, Gasteier seems reluctant to question the medium or the artists. A lot of conventional thinking and mythmaking (read: P.R.) gets parroted. Idol worship aside, and BAD copy-editing, the book has a lot of good info and is recommended for fans of the album.

[Steve Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a trip down memory lane reading this little book about the best hip hop album in history.