“I don’t know how to start this shit, yo” are Nas’s last words before the verse and while it may seem simple and improvised, it proves to be important for the tone for the entire album. The following analysis will structured by highlighting lyrics that are significant to the overall meaning of the song and album with theoretical studies in Hip-Hop culture by authors Murray Forman, Jeffery O.G.
The lyrics will be the primary concern as the old-school-inspired beats serve as a proper accompaniment to Nas’s masterful storytelling and delivery. State of Mind”, “Halftime” and “One Love”. While the entire album is significant to the artist’s intent, three songs will be the focus of my Illmatic analysis: “N.Y. This is significant because it is the location of Nas’s inspiration for the album’s concept: stories based on his experiences of growing up in the Queensbridge projects. The projects used to be my world until I educated myself to see there’s more out there.įurthermore, as author Michael Eric Dyson explains in “Rebel In America” Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic, the Queensbridge imagery transforms Illmatic into “a sonic map”. I used to think if I left, if anything happened to me, I thought it would be no justice or I would be just a dead slave or something. I used to think I couldn’t leave my projects. That’s the year I started seeing the future for myself and doing what was right. That was the year I started to acknowledge everything. The significance of the photograph, especially at this early age, is explained by Nas in an interview with MTV: The child is Nas himself, or more appropriately, Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, at age seven (Cowie, 2) and behind the young boy is a gritty New York City block (Juon, 1). While this seems unrelated to cinema, Hip-Hop is a culture that has been disseminated through film (such as 8 Mile, a film I also wrote an essay on which is posted right above this one!)Īt first glance, Illmatic by Nas features cover artwork of an African-American child juxtaposed with a photograph of a street-block.
This is an essay examining the work of Hip-Hop artist Nas and his album Illmatic.