By Aleks Jankovic
On April 19th, 1994, Nasir Jones kicked off his hip-hop career with his debut album, Illmatic. Not only for its time, but even still today, it was a testament as to what could be accomplished with the genre, and what made it especially interesting compared to any other variety of music.
This was one of the first instances in a popular hip-hop album where the instrumentals are based mostly on jazz samples, which made a huge impact on the cultural backgrounds of the genre. Since hip-hop was developed as a genre to discuss black struggles in America, and jazz music was built on black musicians, this use of sampling by Nas and his team added an extra layer of context to the album’s overall theme. As the instrumentals change from one texture to the other, the jazz samples that build the instrumental help to convey his message of black struggle beyond simply a lyrical context. It allows the instrumentals to speak for themselves and become a separate expression of ideas.
The lyricism Nas portrays was also wildly innovative for the time. Critics of Illmatic praised Nas for his expansive vocabulary and ability to convey ideas through rhyming verses. His ability to come up with clever and intuitive rhyme schemes within his bars helped popularize the “New York” flow that took over the genre for the majority of its life. Throughout the album, Nas discusses the daily experiences and events of a black teen living in the projects of New York City, and how he is put at a disadvantage within his society due to his racial status. Illmatic helped popularize this lyrical theme further within the genre, and discussed a level of black struggle that was not often present in the genre’s previous years. Songs such as Life’s a Bitch and NY State of Mind truly help capture the introspective and reflective nature of Nas’ lyricism, and go to portray how his songwriting, when combined with the sampled instrumentation, help create an atmosphere that puts you right within the world Nas was forced to grow up in. It adds a level of context to the struggle of African Americans seldom present within the genre previously, and it changed the trajectory of the hip-hop scene for years to come.