album #44

illmatic (nas)

This is my favorite hip hop album that I've heard. Grimy and melodic beats; thematically a little predictable (crime and braggadocio, assertions of authenticity) but lyrically dexterous. Great voice, great flow.

There are so, so many good tracks on this album. "The Genesis" has a nice, heavy buzz in its sound; "NY State of Mind" is awesome- dark, slowly fierce, intense, plus some of the quickest, most fluid rapping on the whole album. "The World Is Yours" has that great, fuzzy piano beat, and some of my favorite single lines- 'I keep fallin, but never fallin six feet deep' and 'I'm out for dead Presidents to represent me…' awesome. "Halftime" is pretty cool. "Memory Lane" mixes a darkly autobiographical lyrical bent with an upbeat, almost kidlike beat- a nice, fuzzy, sinister song. "Represent" is a particularly vivid, criminal song, it makes me think of some of Biggie's brutal crime story raps. And the fuzzy, synth beat is fantastic, one of my favorite beats. "It ain't hard to tell" is a good closer, cocky with a great, zippy, busy (but not overwhelming) beat.

I've written before that melodic beats are the key for me to enjoy hip hop, and this album provides them in spades. Plus Nas has a great voice and the rhymes are pretty incredible- he's just a relentless wordsmith. I'd like to read up more about this album and it's historical significance for rap music. What I've read so far is pretty interesting.

1994 was a pretty enormous year for east coast hip hop- Illmatic, 36 Chambers, Ready to Die. 36 Chambers was all right, kinda funny, kinda interesting, but overall my least favorite of these three. Ready to Die was pretty incredible, with a great mix of brutality, humor and melancholy. Lyrically that was probably the most distinct and interesting record- hard to top Biggie's voice. But I really, really like Illmatic. It's smart and melodic, and also makes for good casual listening. I can just listen to it while I'm doing anything. Very good one.

I'm looking forward to exploring more of the hip hop from this era and from the years before. Very cool record, very good one.