100 Best Albums
- 19 APR 1994
- 10 Songs
- THE FORCE · 2024
- Scar Tissue - Single · 2024
- Define My Name - Single · 2024
- Lake Entertainment Presents: The 41st Side (Deluxe) · 2023
- Magic 3 · 2023
- Magic 3 · 2023
- Magic 3 · 2023
- Magic 3 · 2023
- Magic 3 · 2023
- Magic 3 · 2023
Essential Albums
- The beginning of Nas’ career is straight out of a hip-hop fairy tale: He earned praise as a prodigy with an appearance on Main Source’s “Live at the Barbeque”, where he audaciously rhymed that he “went to hell for snuffing Jesus”; lived up to the hype with the all-time classic 1994 debut album Illmatic; and earned success on the charts a few years later with his hit single “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)”, from his sophomore album It Was Written. But in the subsequent years, he weathered tumult. His ambitious plans for a double-disc called I Am… were thwarted by leaks, leading him to record a heft of new songs for its eventual 1999 release. He dropped his critically panned fourth album Nastradamus in the same year, convincing listeners that the insightful street poet had lost his way for a materialistic and impersonal version of himself. A triumphant battle with JAY-Z and the back-to-basics 2001 album Stillmatic conveyed a reinvigorated return to his roots. But 2002’s The Lost Tapes—a collection of unreleased songs that were bastardised by leaks and industry red tape—proved that Nas had never really lost his way in the first place. Most albums featuring unreleased material are perceived as vaults of throwaways with flashes of brilliance—stuff that wasn’t good enough to make the final cut of studio albums. But The Lost Tapes has some of the most focused and impressive songs of Nas’ career. Many of the collection’s 12 songs are overtly autobiographical and introspective, showing his original vision for I Am...: “Doo Rags” is an impressionistic recollection of his childhood in 1980s Queensbridge; “Drunk By Myself” finds Nas isolating himself into a depressive, self-destructive stupor; and the album closers “Poppa Was a Playa” and “Fetus” take a hyper-conceptual approach to observing his family’s actions and pondering their impact on his own behaviour. But The Lost Tapes doesn’t rely solely on diaristic memories: “Black Zombie” pleads for listeners to aspire beyond stereotypes and oppressive systems, while “No Idea’s Original” and “Purple” are sharp, stream-of-consciousness rhymes that spark like lightning in a bottle. These cuts could have completely changed the perception of Nas’ less lauded works, but as is, The Lost Tapes is proof that Nas has more heat on his cutting-room floor than most have ever touched.
- Nas' 1994 debut album, Illmatic, immediately cemented the Queens MC as one of rap music's most gifted and celebrated lyricists—a scene-painter almost without parallel, delivering an endlessly quotable stream of aphorisms steeped in the traditions of New York rap. During the seven years after Illmatic, however, Nas was known mainly for pop crossover records and club bangers. That all changed in 2001, when Nas and JAY-Z clashed in one of the most explosive dis wars in rap history; “Ether”, the name of Nas' savage song-length diatribe, promptly entered the slang lexicon as a word for completely decimating your opponent. "Ether" is the second track of Stillmatic, Nas' fifth album and full-length return to hungry, introspective, non-commercial rhyming. Here, Nas is back to what made him adored in the '90s: snapshots of his youth, vivid visions of crime, boasts that paint him as no less than one of the all-time greats—and the lyrics to back it up. The powerful "One Mic"—based on the quiet-loud dynamics of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight"—is a tongue-twisting ode to his own art in the shadows of hood life and beef. "Rewind" tells a story in reverse, while "Destroy and Rebuild" is built with some Slick Rick-styled flows. Like Illmatic's grab bag of collaborators, the beats come courtesy of friends old and new. On single "Got Ur Self A…," producer Megahertz flips the Sopranos theme into an icy track; on "You're da Man", Large Professor utilises the voice of Rodriguez years before Searching for Sugar Man; and DJ Premier uses Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack for the partially nostalgic "2nd Childhood". All in all, a triumphant return to form from a rap great.
- While Nas’ 1994 classic Illmatic is often hailed as the golden standard for hip-hop debuts, there’s a dedicated sect of his fanbase that prefers his chart-topping follow-up, It Was Written. Nas’ early work had established him as a prodigious street poet with uncanny observational gifts. But Nas was after more than critical acclaim; he wanted superstardom, plaques and respect. And on It Was Written, released in 1996, he makes a good case for why he’s worthy of them all: “There’s one life, one love, so there can only be one king,” he raps on “The Message”. This is the album in which the rapper adopted the persona of “Nas Escobar”—a mafioso alter ego inspired by drug lords, as well as rap contemporaries like Notorious B.I.G. and the Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon. The imaginative approach took his career to new artistic and commercial heights. It Was Written is a gangsta flick over speakers, with Nas serving as both Coppola and Brando—he sets the scene as director, and takes on the star role. “The Message” has him scoping enemies and bedding baddies in a Mercedes-Benz wagon; “Watch Dem N****s” questions his crew with suspicions of betrayal; and “Shootouts” narrates a plot to take out a trigger-happy police officer. The storytelling on It Was Written is stark, cinematic and full of details: No-name extras are rendered as vividly as the album’s main characters, down to their clothes, hair and facial expressions. Musically, Nas’ flow becomes more spacious, eschewing his multi-syllabic delivery for one that’s light and effortless. And to soundtrack his new approach, he enlisted the Trackmasters, the production team that had already made crossover hits like Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” and Mary J. Blige’s “Be Happy”. The duo supplied Nas with silky smooth beats that veered left of the boom-bap foundation he had laid on Illmatic, helping Nas find the largest audience he’d ever seen. But Nas’ street tales didn’t mean he abandoned substance. He imaginatively personifies himself as a gun on “I Gave You Power”, portraying resentment and helplessness toward the hordes who endlessly use him to destroy communities. “Black Girl Lost”, meanwhile, speaks of a young woman who struggles with self-love as a result of heartbreak and objectification. And “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)” imagines a hood-utopia, one free of cops, poverty and fear. Nas didn’t duplicate the vibes of his debut, but he had bigger dreams to pursue—and It Was Written was his first step toward reaching them.
- 100 Best Albums Nas lied to us. Four tracks into his debut album, he told listeners, “The world is yours,” but he was wrong. And if he didn’t know it going into the release of Illmatic, he knew almost immediately after. As the critical rap universe would assure him, the world belonged to Nas himself—a New York rap prodigy hailing from the talent-rich Queensbridge housing projects whose 10-track debut realised the promise he’d shown as a guest MC on Main Source’s “Live at the Barbeque”. And while the album was immediately recognised as a gem by those in the know, its impact on hip-hop at large would only fully be appreciated in the years following. Illmatic is only nine actual songs (not counting opener “The Genesis"), and while it was reportedly released in haste to combat the rampant bootlegging of an early version, it’s no less heavy a listen. Its first single, “Halftime”, appears on the soundtrack of the 1992 film Zebrahead and, coupled with his “Live at the Barbeque” verse, positioned Nas as hip-hop's next great MC, well before an album was ready. With Illmatic, Nas' poetic aptitude reveals itself, the MC introducing turns of phrase and perspective previously unheard within the art form. “My mic check is life or death, breathing a sniper's breath/I exhale the yellow smoke of buddha through righteous steps/Deep like The Shining, sparkle like a diamond/Sneak a Uzi on the island in my army jacket lining,” he spits on “It Ain’t Hard to Tell”. Illmatic’s sample-heavy sound comes courtesy of a veritable dream team of production talent (DJ Premier, Large Professor, Q-Tip, Pete Rock and L.E.S.), a line-up that helped to break a long-standing tradition of single-producer hip-hop albums. Together they present a unified vision of the murky, guttural, jazz-heavy hip-hop that would come to define the '90s New York sound. Aside from L.E.S., the group were all established in their lanes, but they'd elevate their practices for Nas, an MC of his caliber making it that much easier for everyone to shine. Over menacing piano lines (“N.Y. State of Mind”) and horn stabs (“It Ain't Hard to Tell”), Nas is able to transition seamlessly and continuously between freewheeling non sequiturs and vivid storytelling (a verse from “One Love” would inspire a scene in video director Hype Williams' feature film Belly). The only person who gets a guest verse on the effort is AZ (“Life’s a Bitch”), and the Brooklyn MC makes the absolute most of the opportunity, effectively writing himself into history by “visualizin' the realism of life in actuality”. Did AZ know then what Illmatic would go on to mean for Nas and for hip-hop in general? Was he aware of the album’s potency and its likelihood to launch the man they called Nasty Nas towards superstardom while also setting a course for him to become an all-time great? Or was AZ simply chasing his own moment, another victim of Nas' unintentional goading, believing his friend when he told him, “The world is yours.”
- 2023
- 2023
- 2022
Artist Playlists
- Hear the story of the chosen one from Queensbridge.
- Cutting rhymes and innovative experiments from the New York MC.
- Hip-hop's revered narrative stylist influences the genre's best storytellers.
- The rap gods and jazz cats behind his mic skills.
- Listen to the hits performed on their blockbuster tour.
- The saga continues! Hear the songs these New York legends are playing on the road.
- John Legend & Florian Picasso
- Mary J. Blige
More To Hear
- They called him the Second Coming for a reason.
- We connect the dots in Queens, from Nas to Nicki Minaj.
- Nas’ old music aged like fine wine, but his new music is just as fresh.
- The artists talk about 'Judas and the Black Messiah.'
- Plus, tracks by Popcaan, Drake, and more.
- On love, loss, and the Bad Boy Reunion.
About Nas
A genre’s quintessential recording is forged from the eternal quest for artistic perfection: Nas established hip-hop’s apogee with his first album, Illmatic. Born Nasir Jones in New York City in 1973, the son of jazz musician Olu Dara redefined hip-hop in 1994 with his debut, flipping tales of structural poverty into intricate hood scripture and fomenting the boom bap style. His follow-up, 1996’s baroque and brooding It Was Written, reinvigorated mafioso rap and built Nas’ standing as music’s foremost chronicler of crime, a distinction he vividly defended with Stillmatic in 2001. On that album, Nas realised new modes of narrative (in “Rewind”) and spectacle (with the eruptive “One Mic”), distilling his ability to document street life like few others in rap. Evolving from Queensbridge project laureate to sage social documentarian, Nas certified a parabolic legacy throughout the 2000s, charging his allegorical, compound rhymes with public commentary. Energised by his stirring blue-sky alliance with reggae scion Damien Marley, 2010’s Distant Relatives, Nas returned with the cultured Life Is Good in 2012, leading the golden age into the present with midlife verity, a winning composite he continued with the 2020 album King’s Disease. Reflecting on three decades of influence so far, Nas told Apple Music, “I’ve been blessed enough to see a gift in myself, polish it, present it to the world, and light comes to it.”
- HOMETOWN
- Brooklyn, NY, United States of America
- BORN
- 14 September 1973
- GENRE
- Hip-Hop/Rap