Nas's Illmatic (11 page)

Running underneath the clip was Nas’s own genesis, his first verse from “Live at the BBQ” (it cuts out right as he is about to say his most famous line, “When I was 12 I went to hell for snuffin’ Jesus”). As the music kicks in, Nas sits around with his friends AZ and Cormega, the latter of which has the first line “Yo Nas, what the fuck is this bullshit on the radio, son?” They talk back and forth about hip hop and their lives, and Nas finishes the track with “Representin’ is illmatic.”

“The Genesis” is often maligned not for what it is, a short and mostly harmless intro that sets up the tone of the album, but for what it isn’t. Most specifically, it isn’t a tenth track. This, people often argue, makes
Illmatic
more of a nine-song EP than a full-length album, particularly in the CD era when hip hop albums including skits routinely run over 20 tracks.

But regardless of whether or not the length of the album is appropriate, “The Genesis” manages to provide the album with a proper introduction without dwelling too long on premusic formalities (see
Wu Tang Forever
for an example of a first track that everyone skips after the first listen). The name itself implies the creation of a world, and even if Nas’s world already existed, here is certainly an invitation in at the very least.

Serch, who executive-produced the record, argues strongly for the necessity of the track in cementing
Illmatic’s
reputation. “If you look at a Lou Reed record, or Zeppelin’s
Houses of the Holy
, or Pink Floyd’s
The Wall,”
he says:

All of those records have one thing in common. They are all incredibly autobiographical. They all tell a story of an artist
finding themselves within the groove of their music. Nas wanted to tell the story of where he came from. That’s why “The Genesis” is so important on that record and why we fought with Charlie Ahearn [the producer/director of
Wild Style]
to get that
Wild Style
sample cleared.

The battle Serch speaks of, one which began to rage when Fab 5 Freddy (who was directing the video for “One Love” at the time) bizarrely told Ahearn not to let Nas use the sample, could have ended with a cease and desist order against
Illmatic
because Ahearn was not sure he was happy with the terms of use.

That Serch and Faith Newman of Sony fought to include the sample at the risk of delaying a record that was already losing sales due to heavily bootlegged leaks displays the importance they placed on the introduction. When the album begins, and the subway rumbles by as Zoro declares his destiny, they seem very smart indeed.

The first real song on Illmatic is arguably the best, a definitive interpretation, depending on your mood, of Nas, Queensbridge, or all of New York Hip Hop. Serch says the track sums up his experiences visiting Nas in his neighborhood. “The intro of ‘N.Y. State of Mind’ is you’re walking out of the subway into QB. And that’s what it feels like going out of the dark of the subway to the foot of the projects. That piano riff. when it slowly melts in and gets louder, you just know that Nas is about to bring heat.”

The irony, in fact, is that Nas didn’t know it. The brief intro, where Nas and his friend ad-lib a few lines, was entirely unplanned. Premier tells the story of how that first take became the one they used:

Showbiz was there from Showbiz and AG; we were all in the same circles. And I was searching for the sample, and when I found that sample, Nas was like “Ooh ooh, this sounds ill, can you hook that up? And I hooked it up. Then all of a sudden, Grandwizard from Bravehearts, Grandwiz used to always be there, and next thing we know it’s like “yeah yeah, black, it’s time” and they went back and forth and then he was like “straight out the fucking dungeons of rap, where fake niggas don’t make it back.” He is just kinda talking and I’m looking at him ‘cause I’m about to count him in. And he’s looking at the paper just shaking his head to himself like, “I don’t know how to start this shit.” And I’m counting “one, two, three,” and he looks up and sees me counting “two, three,” and he just goes “yo” and starts rhyming. He did the whole verse non-stop and he just stopped and was like “damn, it don’t sound right, does it sound good out there?” And we were just like high fivin’ and going crazy, like, we were just blown away.

The beat Premier gave Nas for the track was dark and paranoid, matching a deep piano riff (with a high flutter at the end) from jazz drummer/pianist Joe Chambers’s “Mind Rain” with a high sharp guitar stab from Donald Byrd’s “Flight Time.” The chorus is Premier scratching a sample of Rakim from “Mahogany,” off 1990’s Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em. For most of the verses, Premier sticks with the bar-length piano sample, laid over hard drums that snap tight on the speakers. The one place where he deviates is the beginning of the second verse, where Nas tells the story of his dreams, when the piano is traded for the guitar’s piercing urgency. The piano’s dirge-like consistency looks to find death at every turn, while the insistence of the guitar dots quick flashes of opportunity across a
bleak landscape. Their dueling tones tell the tale of Nas’s daily struggle, grinding out his days in the trenches, desperate to claw his way up to the top.

“That one right there is one of my favorites,” Nas told Rolling Stone in 2007, upon the release of his greatest hits. “Because that one painted a picture of the city like nobody else at that time. I’m about eighteen when I’m saying that rhyme. I worked on that first album all my life, up until I was twenty, when it came out. I was a very young cat talking about it like a Vietnam veteran, talking like I’ve been through it all. That’s just how I felt around that time, and the track does that for me.”

The gritty feel of the cut, one of the dirtiest tracks to come out of New York, was entirely intentional according to Serch.

A lot of records lose a little in the translation of mastering, because mastering is all about being clean. But that record in particular, when we mastered it, we kept it as dirty as possible. The only thing we did is level the song so that it was leveled with every other record. And you can feel how dirty that record is when it comes on. It was a bit of an argument, ‘cause when we mastered it the engineer really had a hard time Listening to it. And we were like ’nononono, this record stays the way it is, we just need you to do the levels.’

“N.Y. State of Mind” was also the only track Premier made for the record that he felt immediately happy with. Though his initial beats for “Memory Lane” and “Represent” never sat well with him (see below), “N.Y. State of Mind” was perfect from the start.

I remember when Q-Tip gave me a cassette tape of the “One Love” shit with the Heath brother s. And I remember he didn’t have the drums yet, it was just the sample, and he paused taped it, so it wasn’t too tight yet. But after I heard
“One Love,” I went in and did “N.Y State of Mind” the next day. ‘Cause, you know, it was a competition, it was like we all got on the phone with each other like “yo, man, did you get a new beat?” Like “Nah, man, I’m about to make one.” And I knew Q-Tip was gonna come with it and I knew Pete Rock was gonna come with it, and I knew Large Professor was gonna come with it. And it made the album much better because of that.

Over a decade later, he doesn’t hesitate to name his favorite contribution to the record: “Hands down, ‘N.Y. State of Mind.’ Even part 2 [off of
I Am
…] was good.” Despite this satisfaction, he doesn’t see his work on the record as representative of anything but pure hip hop. When asked if his trips to Queensbridge informed his beat on “N.Y. State of Mind,” he shrugs off the implications. “I consider myself a fan who’s been given a hip hop lottery ticket only the prize wasn’t money it was, like, you won a chance to go in the studio with artists and create your own stuff. I make stuff that, as a fan, I would want to create if I had access to the equipment. I’ve been given the opportunity to make records and I just haven’t stopped yet.”

The third song on
Illmatic
was produced by Queensbridge-native L.E.S., who still tours with Nas as his DJ. “Being that he had all these big name producers on his album, I felt kinda good that Nas picked me to do something,” L.E.S. told
The Source
when the record was released. “I was never really presenting shit to Nas though, and he ain’t really come to me for a beat. We was just chillin’ and he was like, ‘Yo, that’s it.’” The beat is a relatively simple one, constructed out of the Gap
Band’s modest hit “Yearning for Your Love” and a few simple percussion touches.
¹⁰
But the track sticks out as a smooth, wistful song when placed next to its harder-hitting brother s. Nas’s work on the second verse is as strong as his best work on the album, but it’s often overshadowed by the work of two other people that make “Life’s a Bitch” the exception to
Illmatic’
s biggest rules.

The horn at the end of the song is not only the lone live instrument on the record; it is delivered by Nas’s own father, Olu Dara. Nas had wanted his cornet-playing talents on the record, and when he heard the beat L.E.S. had constructed, he knew it was the right place. “I asked my dad to play on the end of it,” he told
Rolling Stone
. “I told him to play whatever comes to mind when he thinks of me as a kid.” If Dara actually listened to his son, he must have been filtering the reality of Nas’s childhood through the concept of memory, draping his thoughts in quiet and mournful reflections on the passing of time. It’s a solo that fits remarkably well, not just with the loop it’s playing over, but with the sentiment of the song, at once resigned to the limits of reality and determined to make the best of what’s left.

The second exception adds an even stronger component to the song, as “Life’s a Bitch” also features the only guest appearance from an emcee on the album. Brooklyn-based AZ (born Anthony Cruz) met Nas around the time the Queensbridge emcee recorded “Live at the BBQ” through a phone cypher, a New York tradition where up-and-coming emcees could hone their techniques with other artists over the phone. They didn’t meet in person for a year after talking on the phone together, and even when they talked during the recording of
Illmatic
, there was never talk of a collaboration.
“We never stressed music,” AZ says now. “We spoke on street issues. But the anticipation on the streets [for Nas’s debut] was just growing at the time.”

The track they would eventually collaborate on was the last recorded for
Illmatic
, which allowed the guest rapper to get a feel for his own approach to the record. “I heard a few tracks off of
Illmatic
prior to recording ‘Life’s a Bitch’ and it was just like a breath of fresh air hearing the other songs. It was street gospel. So when we did record ‘Life’s a Bitch,’ we did it with no anticipation. We both were just products of the environment, and it was simplicity. It was water.”

When he tells the story of how he ended up on the greatest hip hop record of all time, it feels so organic that, if it wasn’t for the pure talent both emcees have, it would almost seem like luck that the track fell together so well.

I came up with the hook. The beat was playing at the time and we had no idea that I was gonna do the record, we was in the studio and L.E.S. put the beat on and I was just going “life’s a bitch and then you die” and they heard it and they were like “oh shit what was that?” And Nas was like “do that.” So I did it and he was like “yo, you got a verse for that,” and I was like “yeah yeah yeah.” So I did it and people liked it within the studio and so we just kept it. I think it was the last song on the album so I thought he was just trying to finish the album up and get it out the way. I didn’t know he sincerely liked the shit himself. I was there for support. I had no inkling of trying to become a part of Illmatic, that wasn’t my goal. My goal was to just come, show some support, and show some love, and that was it.

It’s hard to believe a verse as influential as AZ’s opening bars from “Life’s a Bitch” was recorded as a spur-of-the-moment
impulse. Nearly every couplet here is quotable, from “visualizin’ the realism of life in actuality/fuck who’s the baddest, a person’s status depends on salary,” to “until that day we expire and turn to vapors/me and capers’ll be somewhere stackin’ plenty papers.” The former is followed by “my mentality is money orientated,” and would be the blueprint for the next bling-filled decade of hip hop. “You hear ‘Life’s a bitch, but you gotta put a skirt on hef’ or ‘Life’s a bitch don’t trust her.’ So we definitely planted that in the minds of people, that life’s a bitch and get it while you can get it, you know what I mean?” To convey his quintessential hip hop message, AZ uses similar high-level rhyming skills to Nas, matching the down-key beat with perfect inflections and vocal rhythms.

Despite these now-obvious breakthroughs, the emcee was not initially pleased with his work. “When I heard Illmatic as a whole, it was like the changing of the guards in the rap era to me. So to contribute one verse to a masterpiece, I felt like I didn’t give it my all. But as time went on about two three months, everything exploded. Every record label in the game was knocking at my door.”

AZ’s appearance on Illmatic is often cited as the greatest guest verse in hip hop history. His career after Illmatic took flight briefly, but since the early 2000’s he has been unfairly overlooked by a mainstream that values flash and pop hooks. Ironically, he has become one of the most underrated emcees in the game by sticking to the importance of lyrical technique that made Illmatic great. Whether his solo career is viewed as a solid streak of uncompromising street hip hop or one missed opportunity after another , AZ is above all proud of his contributions to the Nas catalogue. “I was on both five mic albums, which is Illmatic and Stillmatic, and it means a lot to me, because I was a part of history. And no one can take that from me. Not with a gun, not even with death.”

The collaboration between Nas and Pete Rock, easily the most respected hip hop producer of the time, was one that Nas had set out to get from the start. “That was like rocking with Prince,” he told Funkmaster Flex in 2006. “Pete was what Dr. Dre, Kanye West, and Teddy Riley was
at the same time.”
It was hardly hyperbole. After his work with C.L. Smooth and some high profile remixes (including one of the all-time greats for Public Enemy’s “Shut ‘Em Down”), Pete was on top of hip hop, every producer’s favorite producer.