I'd Love to Turn You On #180 - Nas – Illmatic

Over the years as I have worked on and off at independent record stores, I’ve tried my best to learn more about music from my co-workers. In 2004, my assistant manager, Eric, doubled as the store’s hip-hop guru in addition to working as a producer on the side. After working together for a few months, I began a conversation with him about getting back into hip-hop after falling out of touch for a while. Eric’s guidance was key in helping me navigate the work of OutKast, Common, Aesop Rock, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, The Roots, and Immortal Technique, just to name a few. After we had been talking about hip-hop for a while, I asked him if there were any other albums I should check out and he stated that Illmatic by Nas was his favorite hip-hop album of all time.

Since its release in 1994, Illmatic has won a fair amount of praise and credit, but somehow it just doesn’t seem like enough. A lot of other hip-hop albums from the mid-nineties tend to top lists for the decade’s best music, but none of those albums possess the integrity, cohesion, and flawless appeal of Illmatic. Following Eric’s recommendation, I picked up a copy of the album’s tenth anniversary edition and began exploring Nas’ astonishing, yet nuanced debut. “The Genesis” sets the stage for Nas’ storytelling on Illmatic by melding a clip of dialogue from the 1983 movie Wild Style with a conversation among Nas and his peers about life, music, and credibility. Aside from this slice of life introduction, the album flows seamlessly for forty minutes without any interruptions common to hip-hop albums of the era like skits and gags. Over the nine remaining tracks, Nas teams up with a group of producers including DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, and Q-Tip to deliver a singular approach to hip-hop that has aged far more gracefully than much of what was on the radio in 1994. The second track, “N.Y. State of Mind,” begins the album in earnest with a nearly breathless account of the world Nas sees around him. Nas pulls this point of view narrative into sharp focus with the kind of unforgettable wordplay that sets him apart from his peers. The line “I ran like a cheetah with thoughts of an assassin,” blends imagery with psychology in a way that feels so intuitive, yet profoundly unique. Later on in the song, Nas establishes the theme of survival against all odds with the lyrics “I never sleep, ‘cause sleep is the cousin of death” and “Life is parallel to hell, but I must maintain and be prosperous.” Illmatic ends on an incredibly high note with “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” as Large Professor deconstructs Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” and assembles new musical and rhythmic potential out of samples of various elements of the original song. Against this backdrop, Nas’ voice resonates with the confidence and knowledge that he’s delivering the valedictory statement of his masterpiece.

Through the course of ten more albums over the last twenty plus years, Nas hasn’t been able to top Illmatic, but that doesn’t diminish the power of his debut or the quality of his career. Nas has persevered on the course he set with Illmatic and, in doing so, has carved out a distinctive niche for himself in hip-hop. Perhaps Illmatic’s greatest strength draws from how well it has aged. A surprising number of highly rated hip-hop albums of this era now sound clumsy, ugly, and outdated. Illmatic has been compared many times to another debut from a gifted East Coast rapper from the same year, The Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die. Both men were in their early twenties when they released these albums, which cover nearly identical subject material and even share notable visual elements on their albums covers. I’ve listened to both albums repeatedly in the last several years, but just as I grow tired of the nihilism, brutality, and fatalism of Ready to Die, I find myself pulling closer to the resilience, humor, and imagination of Illmatic.

-         John Parsell

What Are You Listening To Lately (Part 9)?

Neil Young - Tonight's the Night
I know a lot of people think this record is just a bummer, but I absolutely love it. And to counter the idea that all it is is a big downer, you've got two songs two in which Neil expresses his joy about Pegi as his young wife and mother of his kid - "Speakin' Out" and "New Mama" - the latter ending on the words "I'm livin' in a dream land." And the songs that do explore darker, grimmer material - and they are many, lest you think I'm missing the point - are countered and buoyed by these, by the joyous energy of "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" that explodes right on the heels of the melancholy "Borrowed Tune," by the overall framework in which he sings a lament for his friend Bruce Berry but still offers Danny Whitten - both Berry and Whitten dead of drug overdoses by the time of recording of this album - the lead vocal on "Downtown." He's tying together the life-affirming and the skirting-the-edge-of-death, he's offering the idea that having the world on a string don't mean a thing, but knowing that shouldn't prevent you from being living life, that in fact it should strengthen your resolve to see what's good out there. Every song is distinct, makes its mark; it rocks hard, it plays it mellow, it's got meaning, it's got life, death, joy and sadness - how much more can you possibly want from a rock and roll record?


Q-Tip - Amplified
I think this is better than any Tribe Called Quest album (excepting compilations). There, I said it and I mean it. Part of the reason is that the vocals come through loud and clear, never submerged in a smoky aura or underproduced to sink underneath the weight of the beats and samples; part of it is the unity of the minimal style that threads through the record. There’s a varied, yet non-stop rhythmic drive pushing every track, each of which is then decorated with an ornamental sound effect or simple melody to mark it in the mind. Just when you think it’s gone to all beats and voice, a shift in the rhythm or a melodic line will ring through and sweeten things enough to carry you to the next riff. And that’s not even bringing in Q-tip’s mellifluous tones. He really is one of the greats, and he doesn’t need a foil to provide counterpoint – he’s got enough variety on his own. Certainly the rhythmic drive is something this shares with some of the Tribe’s albums, but even on the vaunted Low End Theory I find myself waiting a few tracks for the next great song once one’s over, examining in too much detail, for example, the space between “Butter” and “Check the Rhime.” Here, even the lower-key tracks – like “Things U Do” – give me a charge, and true to the album format they’re propped up and strengthened by their surroundings. I love the Tribe when they’re great, but they were never this consistent for me, never made an album whose whole overshadowed the constituent components. Oh yeah, and “Vivrant Thing” stands for me as the greatest single he’s ever made. Ever.


Lou Reed - Mistrial
Unlike, say, Berlin, the failure here is one of execution, not of inspiration. Songs could be better, sharper, more exciting, but as ideas, as an album concept, it’s a continuation of what he’d been doing over the last three or four records – a way less successful attempt, yeah, but where this is a rough stone that may contain nothing but mica and iron pyrite, Berlin is just an over-polished turd. Whether its surface sheen makes it worth exposure to its rotten core is purely up to you. I’d probably rather dig into this one’s shallower lyrical and musical pleasures – again, a continuation of his adult ruminations on his real-world relationships, and a street level look at contemporary problems of New York and of the country – than the feel-bad vibes and overly ornate production of the earlier record. At least he’s gunning for something that can be construed as a positive, rather than a heavy dose of second-hand pessimism. In the same way that The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts explore the tail end of his “dark” years, this is a counterpart to his explorations of a newer, positive and personal songwriting outlook on the world that starts in New Sensations (or really, in Growing Up in Public, though that one’s got its own problems, starting (and perhaps ending) with a band that's not in synch with him). Despite its bad rep amongst Lou fans, I don’t mind this at all, I dig what he’s striving for even if he falls short of the mark – there are at least three other records of his that leap to mind immediately as ones I would less like to hear. And though it’s out of print on a US available CD, it’s a safe bet that you can always find the vinyl used. And cheap, too.