When I decided to start this blog, I was listening to "Illmatic" for the first time. I had it in my head that I would write about my experience as a new listener of the Nasty Nas. I figured it would take me about a week to come up with something to say. Two months and at least 10 listenings later, I still feel that, at best, my inchoate graspings might convey a feeling but not an opinion. But seeing as how waiting two months to post to a new blog pretty much dissolves any credibility I might have, I figured I'd spill something out anyway.
Let me start by saying that I did not expect to like this album. Despite all the cries of "classic" and "life-changing", or maybe because of them, I was thinking I had on my hands a Citizen Kane: something to appreciate as an innovation, but not something I'm going to come back to on a rainy saturday. I was so wrong.
First there's the Genesis, which impresses me immediately by taking a scene from "Wild Style" that I had more or less dismissed as awkward and putting it into a context where it means so much more-- where it becomes a genuine expression of the human need for art. You can already tell in the first minute of the album that Nas, echoed by Lee Quinones, satisfies a primal need within himself with what we are about to hear.
And then he hits you with "NY State of Mind". Nas is possessed, and this track is driven and yet so effortless at the same time. I don't know anything about Nas' process, but I imagine a story that he struggled for months to get it right-- never quite getting there, almost giving up-- and then one morning he woke up, told them to roll the tape, and knocked that motherfucker out.
Maybe it's this quality that makes listening to the album an almost exhausting experience. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't take any effort to stick with it, "Life's a Bitch" and "Memory Lane" are perfect conduits of introspection. It isn't until the end, as the Michael Jackson sample on "It Ain't Hard to Tell" fades out, that you realize you're fatigued. You had put the album on for the long drive home, thinking you'd pause to make a phone call or buy a soda but instead your drove straight through, listening-- and then it's over and you're almost home, and none of the other discs you have will do, so you finish the ride in silence.
