Nas's Illmatic

by Gasteier, Matthew

  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 World is Yours

  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.

  His work on “The World is Yours” cemented that reputation, even among the other producers on the record. Premier, who had already laid down a track for “Represent,” recalls hearing it for the first time and realizing it was a game changer. “I heard Pete Rock play me “The World is Yours” beat, and he was like ‘I’m going to the studio to cut the vocals with Nas, you wanna go?’ I was like ‘hell, yeah.’ And I watched him lay in all the scratches, and do all the different things with Nas that day and I was like, ‘man, I gotta change my beat.”

  Few beats in history would live up to that story, but Pete’s subtle reworking of a quick piano lick from Ahmad Jamal’s “I Love Music” manages to do just that. Pete lays muffled drums and an echoing cowbell over the loop to give it the requisite bounce, and then lets it fill up the track. On the instrumental-only track, it drifts all over the place, with only the chorus (sung by Pete) and a sample from T La Rock’s “It’s Yours” to break it up. As he asks Nas “who’s world is this?” he pans a sample of someone saying “bring it on” across the channels in the back, a perfect touch that would be hard to make out consciously on the first hundred listens.

  As time has passed, “The World Is Yours” has become perhaps the most critically acclaimed track on Illmatic, with many polls and rankings placing it in the top twenty hip hop songs ever made. Pete’s own experience has borne that out. “The song stood out a lot. A lot of people when they mention Illmatic they always talk about that song. Not to say that none of the other songs were hot, cause the whole album was hot. But it seems like a lot of people come at me about that one song.”

  Considering the minor masterpiece he created, Pete is matter-of-fact in his recounting of the creative process. “I met Nas through Large Professor. He brought him up to Mt. Vernon [Pete’s neighborhood in Upper Manhattan]. We brought him to the basement and he went through a couple of beats. He picked that one, and we went in the studio and he told me he wanted me to sing the hook and stuff like that. I did that and it was done. He did his part, and I mixed the song in Battery Studios, and it was a hit.”

  The description is most likely a condensed version of what really happened. Serch and other s have said that, like he did with other producers on the record, Nas went through upwards of 30 beats with Pete before he found the one he really liked. Furthermore, as even Pete says, the beat for the song was created before Nas thought of the concept. This means that Nas, who is known for writing, not rhyming off the top of his head, probably spent some time with the beat in between first hearing it and writing the song, let alone recording it. />
  But the point of Pete’s story is clear: this was work, where two legends who had never met before and who wouldn’t work together again for another decade came together and made something beautiful. Even if he can’t see the significance of the process, the product has stayed with Pete over the years. When asked where the album sits in his own body of work, Pete speaks highly of it. “It’s up there with the greats, ‘cause Nas is so talented. I’ve never heard another emcee like him.” He pauses to reflect on the song and the many classics he’s been behind the boards for. “I think it’s important enough to be in my top ten. Definitely.”

  “The World Is Yours” is also significant for having a remix that was almost as successful as the original when it was released as a single.11 Produced by Q-Tip, the remix came complete with a significant reworking of the lyrics by Nas and a video that was part one of the video produced for “One Love” (the former features Nas’s friend’s apartment being raided by the police, while the latter finds the friend receiving letters from Nas in prison). The remix “was after the alburn had been out,” Tip recalls. “He wanted me to do another song on the album I think, but mine was one of the last songs on the record…He also was fixated on having it just kind of be like ten songs. Like he just wanted it straight up and down. So he wanted me to do a remix.”

  As for the reworked lyrics, the move was made on the fly. “I think that was more of just like an inspiration.” Nas’s reconfigured lyrics are most apparent in the second verse, which is sprinkled with religious references and anti-establishment statements. Yet he adds little touches in other places (he now appears to prefer Air Nikes to Suede Timbs) and somewhat reworks the chorus to reflect the darker beat that Tip produces.

  And dark it is. Atmospheric and soulful, Tip nearly channels Portishead the same year the trip-hop group released their debut Dummy. With only a wobbly trumpet to lighten the mood, the beat here sounds like shimmering water receiving small drops of blood, punched home by snares that rattle and shake. To further distance the track from the original, Tip adds some backing vocals, like “get money” and the head-nodding “la la la la”s that lace the choruses. The end result is almost the exact opposite of the original’s inspirational tone: the world most definitely is not yours. Yet remarkably, the lyrics fit perfectly over this pitch-black statement, mostly due to Nas’s natural smoothness, almost the rapping equivalent of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons’s sultry vocals.

  “The first one that Pete did was so crazy, you don’t try to top it, you just try to complement it,” Tip says. “That’s the way I view remixes. It’s more of you have to complement whatever it is, rather than try to outdo it, shit like that. I just wanted to just fuse with what was there.”

  Pete agrees. “I thought it was dope, I loved it,” he says of Tip’s offering. “It surprised me because the style was Pete Rockish,” referring not just to the remix’s soulful roots, but to its use of space and attention to detail. “So that’s dope. The inspiration comes right out. It speaks for itself.”

  The big question that lingers here is the close relative of the constant mystery among hip hop heads as to why Nas hasn’t made the much-talked-about full-length with DJ Premier, with whom he has had such consistently classic results. Considering the high quality and lasting success of “The World Is Yours,” why did Nas not enlist Pete for future projects? Pete’s answer is clearminded, if unsatisfying for the average fan. “We didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time together. We didn’t get to really know each other like we should have due to outside forces. Without that, nothing good could come out of it. I don’t care how hot you are, I don’t care how hot of a producer you are or how hot of an artist; if you don’t have that bond, nothing can really work between you and that person.”

  Halftime

  “That bassline. The muffled bassline, the crack of that highhat, ‘check me out y’all, Nasty Nas in your area,’” Serch says of what made “Halftime,” the first released Illmatic cut, so great. “It was all of that, just him sounding so young and hungry.” Though “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” was the first track Nas worked on that eventually wound up on the record, Serch and Nas felt that “Halftime” would be a great introduction to Nas’s solo career. “We thought it was a great way for Nas to just get out there. Because there was a huge buzz in New York, but you know how that goes, you know, New York is so insulated, you feel like it’s the whole world. But the rest of the world needed to know about him. And I’ve heard from countless people that ‘Halftime’ really was what opened people’s eyes to Nas and got them ready for what was about to come.”

  As mentioned earlier, “Halftime” was featured on the Zebrahead soundtrack and released as a single. It’s inclusion on Illmatic was always intended, though, and sequentially, it’s the first track to feature the producer most important to the creation of Illmatic, Large Professor. In his interview with Funkmaster Flex from 2006, Nas told the story of how the two first recorded a record.

  Back then there could be a dude with a hot record—but he still go to your high school. And Large Professor had a song called “Think’ [with Main Source]…I had to go in the studio so I had at least three dudes that knew how to make beats with me. And on the way, we picked up Large Professor from his high school. Now I didn’t even know homie, I just knew he had a cool song. So we was all in the same car, all day picking up people who knew how to make beats. ‘Cause I got studio time, if I mess that up, it’s my money gone. And I’m like 16 so I’m just like “Yo, I wanna make some music.” They all like “alright, cool.” So we go in the studio, your man Large just starts putting up beats. He didn’t even want to talk to me. He was hot. I don’t even know if I gave him a little money, I don’t remember, but you just wanted to work back then, you didn’t care who with. So he did the track and I start rhyming and afterwards I thought he didn’t like it, but I knew I had me a demo. It was called “Lyrically Ill.”

  That track has never been released, but that day was much more important as a crucial turning point in Nas’s development as an emcee.

  Large Professor taught me how to do vocals, he taught me how to punch in, and taught me how to get on the mic and how my voice is supposed to sound. And he put me on [“Live at the BBQ”] and I wanted to pay him for putting me on that record. Nowadays cats give you an invoice. He took me on tour and I wanted to pay him to put me on tour. Just to be on that record was bigger than a little advance, that didn’t mean nothing, I love music.

  Though Nas and Large Pro toyed briefly with creating a whole record together, Nas quickly realized he wanted a wider range of talent. Large Pro was more than receptive. “All along since even before ‘Live At The BBQ,’ I was trying be on Nas’s side in this game,” Large Pro said in the original Source interview. “You know, I was tryin’ to tell him, ‘Yo, if you want the ill shit, go to these certain people.’ I was hooking him up with these people so it wouldn’t be some formal shit where the record company sets it up.” It was Large Pro who introduced Nas to most of the producers who worked on illmatic.

  But before any of them came on board, “Halftime” was the first finished track for the album. As a beat, the record is often overlooked in favor of “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” and Pete and Premier’s work. But the track is every bit as impressive as those. Constructing the track out of elements from multiple sources, Large Pro took from classic hip hop gold mines and more obscure hidden gems. Perhaps the most prominent is Average White Band’s “Schoolboy Crush,” most famously sampled for Eric B. and Rakim’s “Microphone Fiend.” Here, the track’s sleigh bells lend a cocky strut, while a vocal sample cleverly used first at the 19-second point rolls you into the first verse and then drifts in and out.

  Next, Large Pro stuck woozy horns over the chorus from Gary Byrd’s “Soul Travelin’ Pt. I,” an infinitely more obscure selection. But, as Serch pointed out, Large Pro saved his best for last, with a booming bassline that thumps along with Nas’s punchlines. Oddly enough, it’s lifted (rather deftly) from “Dead End
” off the Japanese version of the Hair soundtrack. Stuck together, the tracks are a perfect accompaniment to Nas’s vintage hip hop boasts, never distracting attention but always putting the listener in the mood for a good old-fashioned throw down. “Halftime” isn’t the best work Large Professor did on Illmatic, but it’s certainly his most entertaining.

  Memory Lane (Sittin’ In Da Park)

  The two later Premier tracks on Illmatic, “Memory Lane” and “Represent,” might have ended up far different than they did. In each case, a different beat was available, and either Nas or Premier convinced the other one to keep what became the final version. With this sixth track on the album, Premier remembers it was Nas who won the battle.

  On “Memory Lane,” Nas stressed me to use that Rueben Wilson sample cause I was like “ah, it’s cool…” But he was like “nah, I need something that feels like that.” I went and did it, and his whole crew was there. Nas used to have like 20, 30 guys in the studio at every session and they were all like “that’s hot Nas, I’m telling y’all that’s hot.” And Nas liked it from the gate too, you know. So I did it and when I heard it with the vocals, I thought “it don’t sound too bad.”

  The Wilson sample Nas insisted on including comes from the jazz organist’s “We’re in Love.” Everything but the drums comes from there, including the main organ lick, a vibrating guitar that almost sounds like a sitar, and those “oohahhooh”s that float along with Nas’s flow. Though it’s essentially a straight loop, Premier times the beat so it doubles back on itself quickly at the end, making it sound tighter than it comes across in the original.