Widely considered one of the best debut albums in history, and especially rap + hip-hop, Nas’s Illmatic is rap’s tour-de-force. One of the most hyped albums in hip-hop history at the time (and again, overall), it’s an album so monumental in music history that pretty much any hip-hop album that came after is compared to it. Yes, it’s that good – and it helped provide a contrast to the at the time popular G-Funk sound, popularized by Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.
Illmatic is 39 minutes of zero filler, lots of multi-syllabic rhymes, and no superfluous interludes or skits. Detailed first-person experiences oscillate back and forth between stories about prison, the streets, and references to Scarface (“The World Is Yours”). Even the album art is influential, being both referenced and parodied in popular culture.
The record even received a 5-star rating from venerated hip-hop magazine The Source, which was unheard of for a new artist and a coveted rating in and of itself. Oddly enough, the album wasn’t a massive commercial success compared to its reputation as one of the best hip-hop albums in history, *only* selling 2 million copies in the USA, and *only* going Gold by 1996. That obviously doesn’t diminish Illmatic, though. There’s 10 reasons + 39 minutes to figure out why it’s a classic.
