Nas's Illmatic (9 page)

Meanwhile, as Nas sped through hip hop history at pace with the evolving genre, his fantasies, stretching over eras and continents, replaced the reality that wasn’t really there anymore anyway. The world had changed from one that seemed locked into a collision course into one that looked towards hope for a better day, just as Nas came to acknowledge the former. “When I listen to it now,” Nas says of the record, “I say, ‘God, this is what was on my mind at this age? How can that be? How can it be that this is what my reality was?’” If Nas truly couldn’t see the forest for the trees when producing
Illmatic
, then his next step, from acknowledging the limitations of his reality to hoping, perhaps believing, that there was a way out, is a powerful indication of the kind of assault his “walls of intelligence” could withstand.

“That’s what this is all about, right? Clothes, bankrolls and hos, you know what I’m saying? Yo, then what, man, what?”

Nas asks for more in the brief intro to “Life’s a Bitch,” the third track on
Illmatic
. Though he puts it in his friend AZ’s words, Nas at 20 years old had confronted his reality with a simple refrain: “life’s a bitch and then you die.” If “N.Y. State of Mind” painted a picture of Nas’s reality and “One Love” saw him confronting it, forced to recognize its limitations and, finally, its fatal flaws, then this song is Nas beginning to struggle with his next step. How could he ever get past his reality?

AZ’s verse on the song, the only guest appearance on the record, is Nas’s reality personified, drained of any hope but the kind reserved for those endowed with the “street ghetto essence.” This is a future of “stackin’ plenty papers, keepin’ it real, packin’ steel, gettin’ high.” The Brooklyn rapper who, like Nas before him had with “Live at the BBQ,” burst onto the scene with this first-ever recorded verse crystallized the hip hop gangsta world view with his rhymes in the first few couplets:

Visualizing the realism of life in actuality

Fuck who’s the baddest, a person’s status depends on salary

And my mentality is money orientated

I’m destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it.

This doesn’t sound so different than Young Jeezy saying “I command you niggas to get money” or even 50 Cent’s famous credo
Get Rich or The Tryin’
. AZ looks back to a time before “all of us turned to sinners,” but simply shrugs and says “something must have got in us.” His flippancy is balanced with a determination to keep his head down and power through tough times. Nas struggled to rise above the fray in “N.Y. State of Mind,” refusing to get stuck in the game, but here AZ seems mired in the thick of it all, focused on every day because, he is convinced, focusing on the big picture can only lead to despair and the inevitability of death. There’s no heaven here either, because in this worldview, we all “turn to vapors” and then disappear.

But even here, following AZ on “Life’s a Bitch,” Nas offers hope and the promise of redemption in an odd but beautiful line:

I switched my motto, instead of saying “Fuck tomorrow,”

That buck that bought a bottle could have struck the lotto.

Apart from the technical pleasure of this couplet, including the complex rhyme scheme, the double-consonant word choice, and the unobtrusive alliteration, Nas has said something rather profound here. And yet…are we being asked to choose between alcoholism and gambling? It’s true that the “lottery” for Nas isn’t just gambling, but making music or getting an education, or really any possible way out of the ghetto for a kid growing up surrounded by poverty; the chances must seem
that minute. But the lotto isn’t a metaphor for Nas, or at least that kind. He is using a beer and a set of numbers as opposing outlooks on life. One represents resigned despair, the other , a serious—if mathematically illogical—display of faith.

Nas is not the first person in popular music to adopt (or even then reject) the cynical battle cry “Fuck tomorrow.” The Who’s “My Generation” finds them defending their own, asserting “hope I die before I get old” (they didn’t), and of course their nearly direct descendants The Sex Pistols told everyone there was “no future” so they could sell as many records as possible up front. But the authenticity afforded Nas by his experience makes his despair ring so much truer. Rather than dabble in it, however, Nas is much more concerned with his own condition, or more specifically, how to improve it. With his verse on “Life’s a Bitch,” he seems to be asking for a way out, hoping for redemption and putting his faith in the remote odds that he will be able to escape the reality that surrounds him.

Hope for Nas, unlike many of his more religious peers, doesn’t seem to come from God. Though he occasionally mentions God on
Illmatic
, most of the time he is referring to his friends, and the rest is nonspecific or occasionally blasphemous. Nas, who it was reported had originally wanted the cover of the record to be a picture of him holding Jesus in a headlock, did not affiliate himself with any religion at the time of release. “It’s good to do research and study what the ancient Muslims or the ancient Christians were about and how the religion came about,” he told interviewer Bobbito.

It’s good to look at the lessons and see how they tried to educate each other . I studied lessons. I have knowledge of self. I don’t have no religion, but I studied my Black African
history…Right here in America, it’s all about living and doing the right thing. Do the right thing, and that’s righteous right there.

On “Life’s a Bitch,” Nas does say he’s “some Godly like thing created.” But while this might call to a higher power, it might also play into Nas’s self-positioning as the savior of his people. This is the same man who had “God’s Son” tattooed on his chest, whose first words on record were “street’s disciple,” and who has posed as Jesus on more than one occasion. In fact, through most of
Illmatic
, Nas isn’t expecting religion to save him; he’s expecting to take the place of religion. This is most obvious on “Memory Lane,” where Nas speaks of his own capacity for miracles.

My intellect prevails from a hangin’ cross with nails

I reinforce the frail, with lyrics that’s real

Word to Christ, a disciple of streets, trifle on beats

I decipher prophecies through a mic and say “peace.”

His powers seem to stem not from himself, but from a higher power. It’s just not the one you’d expect. Earlier in the song, he claims to “drop the ancient manifested hip hop straight off the block.” He is celebrating his birthday on “Life’s a Bitch,” not because he was created by God, but because he is thankful for having “rhymes 365 days annual plus some.” Nas is “straight out the fuckin’ dungeons of rap,” and this public figure that he has created is doomed to “carry the cross” not for the sins of man, but for the sins of hip hop. The first track, called “The Genesis,” positions Nas as the savior from the beginning.

Nas puts his faith in hip hop. In “The World is Yours,” he ridicules the alternative, labeling it irrelevant and defeatist:

There’s no days, for broke days, we sell it, smoke pays

While all the old folks pray to Jesus soakin’ they sins in trays

Of holy water, odds against Nas are slaughter

Despite or perhaps because of this rejection, “The World Is Yours” tosses off the weight of poverty and responsibility in order to revel in its opposite. It would be surprising if Nas didn’t purposefully place the song directly after “Life’s a Bitch.” That song’s quiet defiance of despair is fully realized with the later track, which features the most hopeful and optimistic Nas on the album, the one where he resolves to clear his path towards redemption:

I need a new nigga for this black cloud to follow

‘Cause while it’s over me it’s too dark to see tomorrow..

Illmatic
, like a great deal of hip hop, has been called nihilistic. A large part of this comes from most rappers’ refusal to judge their subjects, as a common (and lazy) assumption is that if you do not take a stand on something you are advocating it. Nas certainly avoids condemning his surroundings or the lifestyle he leads on the record, but he hardly advocates it either, and here is asking for a brighter day. On “The World Is Yours,” he certainly desires change, and though there is a certain level of irony in taking your rallying cry from a character in a movie that is killed in the end, the basic sentiment is more conscious hip hop than gangsta rap. “You wanna get it but you ain’t doin’ nothin’ but sittin’ there,” Nas says on a promotional video for the album. “You gotta get up and get yours, ‘cause it’s yours, you know what I mean?”

Yet Nas doesn’t seem to strive for anything here beyond the basic needs of survival. Though it is mostly physical survival he is concerned with, economic survival is close behind, and
though he questions it at the beginning of “Life’s a Bitch,” Nas certainly believes cash rules everything around him. Even on that song he asserts “it’s all about cash in abundance.” He flirts with drug dealing because “loose cracks produce stacks” and “Nowadays I need the green in a flash just like the next man.” Still he turns to his natural talent to save him, because “a crime couldn’t beat a rhyme.” Money is important to Nas, but his ultimate faith returns to himself. “Rhymes’ll make me richer than a slipper made Cinderella,” he correctly predicts on “One Time 4 Your Mind.” As long as you have faith in yourself, the rest will come naturally.

Though he would eventually dip into “rings fronted with stones,” Nas is more concerned about making money than flaunting it on his debut. But the root of the drive to consume that hip hop finds itself stuck with today stems from much of the same belief system Nas espouses here. Capitalism and commercialism rule hip hop, because hip hop is fundamentally about the American Dream. Chasing it. Pointing out its inconsistencies. Being shut out of it: Nas points this out quite literally when, in his 2003 video for “I Can,” a simple and refreshing song directed at the Black youth, he wears a shirt that says “I am the American Dream.”

The pursuit of truth in the face of myth dominates underground hip hop just as strongly as it does mainstream rappers who “make it rain” and make proud appearances on MTV’s
Cribs
. The image of the star rapper is the image of the cowboy, forging his Own path, crossing the law when the law needs to be crossed, living by his own set of rules. Nas, like his West Coast contemporary Tupac, plays with this persona as often as he embodies it. But unlike Tupac, who was raised by a former Black Panther and enjoyed a relatively safe childhood, Nas has the authenticity of despair to make his story ring true. Tupac’s contradictions often seemed like calculated positioning, with
neither side revealing the true artist. Nas is able to seem like he believes in both alternatives, because they exist around him. There are many paths laid out on
Illmatic
, and each one for Nas makes up a parallel universe—“rich or doing years in the hundreds,” “havin’ dreams that I’m a gangsta…But just a nigga walking with his finger on the trigger.” He asks and answers the authenticity question: “Check the prognosis, is it real or showbiz?/My window faces shootouts, drug overdoses/Live amongst no roses, only the drama, for real.”

And still, Nas is left with just his own knowledge and an ingrained desire to make a better life. In the end, the most powerful statements of faith on
Illmatic
might come from the two earliest songs: “Halftime” and “It Ain’t Hard to Tell.” Here is where Nas takes a simple beat, ignores song construction, and simply spits his rhymes. These two songs aren’t about anything but Nas and his innate ability. He dominates break loops. He’s an ace when he faces the bass. He sets it off with his own rhyme. It’s clear that any artist who would rely so much on his own talent to carry his debut would be confident beyond recommended levels. But that disregard for convention helped Nas create great art just as it helped him attract a wide and diverse fan base. Though he knows and loves hip hop history, Nas’s confidence would push him towards innovation that would make this timeless, journey into adulthood seem fresh and unique.

“I don’t know how to start this shit …”

Nas begins “N.Y. State of Mind” with hesitation, but it can’t be because he is unsure of his mic skills. If it is, it’s the only place where his total faith in his talents fails him. Even as an ad-lib, his reticence is an unusual occurrence on the record. Nas didn’t intend to imply with this comment anything about the journey of
Illmatic
, but the line fits. The record carves a path to adulthood, littered along the way with sin and temptation. But this inner-struggle is mirrored by an outward reaction, the creation of a persona that interacts with the world and finds its place among many.

This is the ultimate choice for Nas: to follow in the footsteps of those that came before him, or to turn away from his existence and strive to make a better life.
Illmatic
was definitely a record that acknowledged tradition while igniting a revolution within hip hop. But within the album, Nas’s personal struggles culminate with this question of change, personal and environmental.

The choice is a multi-layered one for the emcee. It is one hip hop struggles with itself. The still-young genre carries the torch of Black American music, reflecting the mood of a culture spread out over a nation, occasionally speaking out against injustice, often intending to be nothing more than the social lubrication for a night designed to forget the burdens of life. And yet, hip hop provides a new musical vocabulary, created by the first generation to come of age in the so-called stagnation of the post-civil-rights era. Here is a truly post-modern genre that reflects life in the contemporary world, a musical style that represents the interplay between past and future. Is there anything that melds tradition and revolution more succinctly than appropriation?

Nas has direct association with this, because his father is a jazz musician.
⁹
The new generation of musicians in the black community has embraced hip hop out of tradition
and
revolution. One without the other would not have been able to achieve the success that this unending line of musicians has seen over the long history of pop music.