#Illmatic

[jaygaeze]

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Nas released his debut album Illmatic April 19, 1994

[creativelywise]

Photo by @dannybones64

[warhead]

[alazarrr]

NASIR.

[soupy-sez]

Nas – It Ain't Hard to Tell (1994)

[madamshogunassassin]

It Ain't Hard To Tell - Nas (1994)

[instructionsonback]

[nk-salinger]

Nas, 1994. Photo by Danny Clinch.

[baggyboxersagger]

[ardl]

Eighty years before Illmatic, a twenty two year old Joyce penned a fifteen-story collection that follows a range of characters from childhood to middle age. But they don’t develop or mature; they have epiphanies but no resolutions. It’s about Dubliners boxed in by poverty, strict Catholicism, the legacies of British colonialism, and booze; scheming and drinking and pimping and suffering — and trapped, trying and failing to escape. Joyce wanted it to “betray the soul of that hemoplegia or paralysis which many consider a city.” Its stripped-down style boots forward modernism; T.S. Eliot said it “destroyed the whole of the 19th century.” It’s a vision of urban and spiritual decay, semi-autobiographical, giving tiny moments in normal lives. You want me to match them up, story-to-track, one by one? Don’t test me son, I’ll fucking do it. “Memory Lane”? That’s “Araby.” That sample on “Represent”? That’s the snow falling in “The Dead.” Straight up, shit is real and any day could be your last in the jungle. I’m saying though: Illmatic, Dubliners — nostalgic and loving, but also suffused with deprivation mentally and physically; square-foot-level embedded in place; and everyone wants something more, wants to escape. There ain’t nothing out there for you. Oh yes there is: this.

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Nas released his debut album Illmatic April 19, 1994

[deadthehype]

Nas performing at illmatic album release party at The Fever

(via upnorthtrips)

[3-tearz]

[realnyhiphop101]

Nas In 1994. The "Illmatic" Era