Johnni Lightning

Illmatic is worthy of the hype. It is one of the greatest rap albums of all time. It benefits from it's brevity, with 9 tunes 1 skit. Too many rappers went overboard and had ridiculous skits and bloated albums. Not to say bad things about those no longer with us, but the album most guilty of that is Notorious B.I.G's Life After Death.

edwardc77

When I first heard “Illmatic” I was a bit underwhelmed by it. Due to all its hype, I was expecting something more aggressive like “It takes a nations of millions..” or even maybe more eccentric like “Paul’s Boutique”. Anyway, after repeated listens the album grew on me, and yes I tend to consider it a perfect album in the same low key way that I find “Sunflowers “ by Van Gogh to be a perfect painting.

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Thought he lost everything then he lost a whole lot more....

Psychedub Dude

Its definitely an essential album in any hip hop heads collection. It was one of the most complete hip hop albums I ever heard initially all those years ago and I still jam to it now.

Nas kind of peaked with this album though, never really got that same vibe from him. Hes had a few good albums since but nothing compares to Illmatic.

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There is only one beer left
Rappers screaming all in our ears like we're deaf
Tempt me, do a number on the label
Eat up all their MC's and drink 'em under the table

[B]Last.fm

Shadows Of Our Souls

DirtyScopeBeatz

I am a big fan of Nas but still have never listened to the full illmatic album. I still think no album in the history has been more over-hyped than Jay-z's Reasonable Doubt.

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Most people like to rave about the success of rich folks.
I like to rave about the success of poor folks.
Nothing makes me happier than to see the little guys succeed.

Carpe Mortem

I gotta be honest, I just gave the album a spin for the first time recently and I was a little disappointed. People swore by it up and down but not one song stood out to me. There was a serious lack of emotion. If you have an example to the contrary, I'd be more than happy to see it.

Forward To Death

It just seems like a consistent album, every track to me is pretty excellent. Ofc, I really don't give two ****s about the emotional aspect of the music, since you can't really even quantify that it exists in music. Someone's version of emotion might be more dry than another's, and I think it's silly to say something like "oh, Jimi Hendrix's guitar playing is so emotionally driven, but then when I listen to something like Buckethead, it doesn't sound very emotional at all!" even though we have no idea what their emotions are, or if they're even there.

Anyways, I like the jazzy production and storytelling rapping on Illmatic, and I think that's why it stands out amongst it's peers from the early-mid 90s hip-hop scene. I'm not quite as high on it as I was a couple of years ago, when I really started getting into more hip-hop, but it's still a very good album.

Favorite song off the album:



Also, Goof put me on to Elzhi's remake, which I actually have to admit is better just because of the updated production, even though it's very true to the original.

Goofle

Hell yeah. Elzhi also has some crazy ass lines.

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Carpe Mortem

Alright I lied, that song did stand out, I enjoyed it and remember now. But put it this way, I can think of at least five other similar albums I enjoy more. With how much people talked up Nas, I was really expecting some impressive, mind blowing ****. Maybe at the time it was. But there's been plenty of jazz-oriented hip-hop since then that I like more, and I aint trying to be h1p h0p kult by listening to it.

Not that anyone else is, I just wanted to use the phrase h1p h0p kult.

Cuthbert

20 years old today. Happy Birthday.
'Illmatic' at 20: Nas Reflects on His Landmark Debut - Fuse

duotone

Thanks, I enjoyed that. I watched the Nas Time Is Illmatic movie/documentary yesterday, definitely worth checking out if you haven't seen it already.