The most likely reason for this is that Nas' classic record was released in the modern era and hip hop heads such as myself will buy anything he releases in the hopes that he can recreate his masterpiece. It's puzzling that Nas is still relevant while other classic rappera, such as Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap have to work at Kroger to get by. Still, though, he is arguable one of the most well known rappers in the world, even today. Subsequently, Nas is often seen as the guy who created Illamtic. He's has moments of greatness, but nothing he's done can really compare to Illmatic. You can argue that it's spearheaded the downfall of hip hop, but it's also created multiple classic, so thank Nasir for that.Įven though it basically let Nas do whatever the hell he wanted to do for the rest of his life, Illmatic has also been a detriment to his discography. Having multiple producers is obviously normal today and unless a huge paradigm occurs, it's going to stay that way. Instead of sticking one trusty producer, Nas chose to bring together an allstar lineup consisting of Nas himself, L.E.S., Dj Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, and Q-tip. That could be for better or worse, but that's another topic. Illmatic has impacted hip hop is almost every way imaginable, but most importantly it changed the way rap albums were produced. Leaving no room for filler, these ten song are often regarded as the 'hip hop ten commandments' Illmatic is famously only ten tracks long. I'm still not entirely sure why that many people knew of the guy already but it doesn't really matter. Even as a debut, Illmatic was one of the most highly anticipated releases of the 90's. Based on the strength of his verse on Main Source's 'Live At The Barbecue', Nas was signed to Columbia Records, who did an outstanding job marketing this record. Illmatic is the debut of Nasir Jones and, like stated above, it's generally regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. Even after all than time it hasn't lost any of it's shine and carries even more weight than it did when it was released. Also, we're coming up on it's twenty year anniversary. That's reason enough to get a review up on it. You will never see one album proclaimed 'the greatest album ever' more than Nas' debut.

As a result, it's time for Illmatic, the most indisputable classic in our genres history. To be honest, I can't think of anything like that of the top of my head. Starting off classics week, I thought it would be cool to pick something that only I thought was a classic or is often forgotten.

Nas illmatic 1994 zip