Finally. This passage of life has been documented.
Me? I’m still wondering why XXL did making’s of on Reasonable Doubt, Ready to Die and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx before this? Biast opinion, I know. But it just seems right to start off with Illmatic.
Before I go on my rant, this article has been scanned in by FWMJ. Peep it here, and save your $16 AUD that XXL charge you to read it here in Melbourne aight?
I’m being put on the spot here, but here’s my Illmatic experience. I’ll try make it brief.
Illmatic wasn’t the first Hip-Hop album I heard and it definitely didn’t happen at the start. In fact, I think I listened to Illmatic once then didnt play it for another 6 months. I think Illmatic really kicked in when I started writing and recording my own music. A year went by, I grew up a bit, then I heard ‘Life’s a bitch’…
It was school holidays and I remember just calling a friend of mine that I had linked up with through hoops and just saying ‘We’re going to JB to buy a copy of Illmatic.’ The copy I had was burnt and it only felt right to have a proper copy, but it was so dope that I just kept using the burnt copy and didn’t touch the real one. Anyway, we both bought a copy went our separate ways, later that night text messages were exchanged with the likes of ‘Listen to half time, incredible.’ or ‘Dude, I think I’m in a New York State of Mind’
Honestly, I had heard ‘If I ruled the world’, ‘Nastradamas’ and a few others and had nodded my head, even put on a mixtape, but never really praised Nas like I did after that day. My entire concept of Hip-Hop changed after that. To me, if it didn’t feel like Illmatic, then it wasn’t Hip-Hop. It’s funny how one album can change your entire perspective on something, and not just Hip-Hop, but music as a whole.
As a kid with a pipe dream about rhyming or doing something with music, this became a blueprint to my introduction to writing rhymes. It was like, if you can’t top this – then you’re nothing. And the fact that Reasonable Doubt, Ready to Die and Only Built for Cuban Linx came out after this – I think some other aspiring emcees got the same impression as well.