Cuthbert

Mine doesn't. Mine was purchased in 2011 though so obviously won't have it.

Stillmatic is good and contains some of his best work but there's just too much filler. All the tracks Goofle mentioned are great, but the CD has 14 (or 15 depending on what copy you have) tracks on it whereas every track on Illmatic is flawless. The concepts are good on those Stillmatic tracks, but what about One Love from Illmatic? That hadn't been done before had it? And It Ain't Hard to Tell is one of the greatest bragging tracks there is imo. That point basically applies to the CD in general, loads of people may have tried to do the street poet thing but how many did it better than Nas did on that album?

The content is fine, it's just self expression, a lot of it is stuff you will have felt at some point yourself, I know I have. He doesn't have to do over-clever concepts to make the music better, it does what it's meant to do, the CD is very sincere and you almost feel like you're actually in Queensbridge at that time because his storytelling is just that good. The production is first class as well, when I think of the quintessential 90's New York sound, I think of that album and the sound on that more than any other album. He did a fantastic job encapsulating what he wanted to encapsulate from that time, I get a similar feeling when I listen to BIDC, I feel like I'm in the tower blocks in East London just listening to it. Stillmatic isn't close to it.

@Manky I agree IWW is his 2nd best, it is let down by Nas is Coming and If I Ruled the World but the rest of the tracks are all very good. 12/14 very good tracks from any other artist and you'd have people calling it a classic but cos it was post-Illmatic it's just "average". The Lost Tapes is great too. The thing with Nastradamus... didn't his label want two albums from him instead of one so he had to rush it out? I'm sure I read something similar.

Illmatic in my opinion is perfect, I love a lot of albums but there is always something you'd change about them but with this you'd leave it as it is. It's funny that we weren't actually supposed to get Illmatic as it is, they rushed it out because of leaks.