As a guy that gets winded faster than a 2020's president boarding Air Force One, my favorite aspect of 1994's Illmatic is its brevity (a lean 39:48).
That means no bulk skits, no stupid intros or outros, no buddies brought along coattail riding like Em dragging D12 or Biggie making Puff Daddy relevant(AKA, Navi). There's just a single brilliant guest verse from AZ, and the rest is Nas and his "Keep up or get left scratching your head" attitude.
Take this bar from "It Ain't Hard to Tell" for example:
Hit the Earth like a comet invasion!
Nas is like the Afrocentric Asian: half-man, half-amazin'
By the time I'd untangled it (Half man, half am-AZN, get it?) Nas was halfway through the next verse. It's the kind of line a modern punchline rapper would stop production for, queuing a dramatic pause to self-fellate while you catch up.
Not Nas. No time to waste. To much to say. Like a 10 year old breathlessly showing off their Pokemon card collection, worried you'll lose interest before they get through it all.
No worries, Nas. Even the bulk pages of this collection are better than most rapper's careers.
Rating: GOATED/10
0 comments