Illmatic Essays

I decided to work on Nas’s album Illmatic that dropped on April 19, 1994 with the help of Columbia Records. For the album cover there is a faded picture of Nas’s face in front of a city block. The cover of Illmatic is said to have been inspired by a jazz album, Howard Hanger Trio's A Child Is Born (1974). The album's cover message is how “easily innocence is lost in NY's neglected concrete jungles”. Illmatic was a very influential album for several reasons. With rap artists like Ice Cube, Eazy E

tone that would heavily influence the culture of hip hop. Nasir’s most widely accredited debut album, Illmatic, was released in 1994 and is highly regarded as one of the most influential rap albums of all time. In a recent interview with BET’s

purely creative, and truly genius. Illmatic illustrates that exact authenticity, and originality through outstanding lyricism, and production. The culture, and genre of hip hop would change forever because of this album, proving that rap was just beginning through the eyes of Nasir Jones. Originally born Nas bin Olu Dara Jones, Nas would emerge during the mid-90’s becoming

albums changed the genre drastically because of the change in tempo, lyrics, and popularity. These three musical albums, “Straight outta Compton”, “Finally Rich”, and “Illmatic” revolutionized the genre of rap in their own ways and conceptions. “Finally Rich” created “Drill Rap”, “Straight Outta Compton” created “Gangster Rap”, and “Illmatic” brought a great lyrics, tempo, and was nationally popular and loved. Straight outta Compton was the highly popular album released by the group “NWA”. The first

starting the era of East Coast hip hop with his album Ready to Die Nas came out with Illmatic four months before. To this day there is controversy over who started this trend and some speculators go as far as saying Biggie copied Nas on his style and cover artwork. Both albums share many things in common, the style of music, audience, but the one similarity that stands out the most is the album cover. Nas’ Illmatic pictures a young Nas, eight years old with a look on his face well beyond his years

Later on in 1996 Nas followed up “Illmatic” with a new album called “It Was Written” that make a huge impact on all the charts debuting at number 1 on both the pop and R&B charts. “It Was Written” went double platinum with help of the classic singles “Street Dreams” “Head Over Heels” and

Clan created one of the first hardcore styles when they rapped about gangster life over swinging hip hop beats with samples from martial-arts movies. In 1994 a young rapper named Nas released his first album Illmatic. Its loose mid-tempo beats, jazzy samples and Nas' poetic rapping made Illmatic one of hip hop's greatest albums. Other popular hardcore rappers include Puff Daddy, The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and 50 Cent. Los Angeles' gangsta rap developed from the rap music of artists like Ice-T and

" I try to start off with 16 dots on the paper."That's Rakim, one of the first MC's to use rhyme patterns and scheme. Rap gets you out the hood or trap what most people call it. Most people say Rap is all bad and profanity. But it can actually teach about poetry and more things. Most of it started a long time ago, going back to the 70's maybe even 60's. Most people use it to tell their story, the struggles they lived through. Most rapper used to sell drugs like 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, T.I., the Wu-tang

posted just under 150,000 copies, leading some, including MTV News' own Rob Markman, to cry foul, arguing that God's Son deserved a better first week. Dissenters, though, insisted it was too soon to set the album alongside his firmly classic debut, Illmatic. Still, Nas isn't stressed over how history will judge Life Is Good. In fact, he was pretty philosophical about it. "If it's not a classic, that's cool," he said. "That means there's a different title for it that is a different meaning for the

African-American. Hess analyzes the claim made on Nas’ album Hip-Hop is Dead, that the genre is at a stalemate and that power no longer belongs to the hip-hop artists. MTV has ranked Nas as one of the top five MCs of all time, and his 1994 debut album Illmatic is widely regarded as the greatest rap album of all time. According to the Nas, “hip-hop