1. It's short. Like, thirty minutes, thirty one,
thirty four. The last hip-hop LP that could fit
on one piece of vinyl. No filler. No filler! Even
the intro is great. Every song is great. It's
all lean and stuff. No excess.
0. IIlmatic. First, it looks like three I's! See, you
can't tell whether that a small ell or a big eye.
Eye, ell, ell, emm, eh, tee, eye, see. Illmatic.
IIImatic. lllmatic.
2. The intro has a bit of his first appearance
on a Main Source track from 1991. Under
some movie sample. I don't know what
movie.
3. [Funky music starts]
'Ehyo, yo, pull down the shade, man.
Let's count this money, nigga.
Ehyo, Nas, put the Jacksons and the Grants
over there.
You know what I'm sayin?
'Cause we spendin the Jacksons
You know how we get down, baby.'
I know that's about money. But I don't see
much American currency so I'm not sure
exactly what it means.
7. This guy told me that Nas reminded him of
Rakim. But not in the way they sounded. In
some other way. I forget. I actually might have
just read it somewhere. But I actually kind of
think they do sound the same. They have the
same kind of style and they're both great. Nas
uses a lot of different sorts of styles but in a
lot of places on Illmatic he does have a kind of
Rakim thing going.
6. He was only like 19! When he wrote most
of it. Or younger. I'm not really sure. But that's
pretty good.
11. 'Halftime' is my new second favorite
song. It's got some weird jingle bell thing
going on in the beat. Or something. And
it's cool. It's cool.
12. 'Memory Lane' is really great too.
13. a) Nas on most of Illmatic is as smart as any
current underground hip-hop. Without a doubt.
Probably smarter. Smarter than Cannibal Ox.
b) See, the reason the Cannibal Ox album was
so huge was because it was dark and they talked
about guns. Just a bit, but not too much. Because
they like to hear people talk about guns but it's
on a hip indepedent label too. Because Anticon
and Matador have a rule where their artists can't
make references to guns. Def Jux bends the rules
a bit sometimes and they let the gun references
in. And Cannibal Ox aren't white people, either.
So they had that going for them too.
c) But their album was sprawling and 75% filler.
14. It's straight hip-hop, too. No R&B songs
or poppy stuff, kind of. It's more straight
rap than- 'cause that Notorious B.I.G. one
came out the same year, and so did the
one Jay-Z one- anything else. It doesn't
have a bunch of faggy guests or cameos
or whatever on it. It has Q-Tip singing
part of a hook and some anonymous friends
contributing a few verses and that's it. I
think one of those guys from Gang Starr
might be on it, too. But I'm not sure.
15. 'One Love' is good. He gives advice to a
kid and stuff. And it's the Q-Tip song I was
thinking of.
16.a) Listen. Seriously. Okay. I can, like,
picture Queensbridge. New York. And Nas
and stuff. Like. You know? I listened to it a
lot before. And it really made me want to sell
crack and carry a gun. For real. No kidding.
'Cause Nas. And his friends. They're like,
living off their wits. And they drink Hennessy
and smoke blunts. It's kind of a romantic
lifestyle. I figure selling crack and living in
an impoverished neighborhood really isn't
that great, but it sounds really cool. And
it's kind of exotic, see. Because I live in
the remote Canadian north. So, it's like
some faraway, exotic place where people
get rich from selling drugs and such. It's
neat. It has absolutely no meaning to me,
kind of. It's just some fantastical place.
There isn't even a 'hip-hop' or 'urban' or
whatever radio station here. So, I'm fully
isolated from it. So it has a totally different
meaning to me. Or, maybe no meaning at
all. It does have meaning, though. But,
I don't know.
b) He's serious, though. He's not kidding.
The whole thing is pretty serious. There's
no joking around. He's serious.
c) He maintains his professionalism.
18. People always cite 'Life's a Bitch' as one of
the great sad rap songs of all time. Because
there aren't many good ones, I guess.
So, you should download, like, 'NY State of
Mind,' or 'One Love,' or 'The Genesis.' But,
'The Genesis' is just the intro bit. Or you
could just download the whole thing and
steal it.
The Lost Tapes came out today, too.
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Haven't listened to it for many months, and I'm really enjoying hearing it once again. It's easy to forget how fab tunes like "Halftime" and "The World Is Yours" are. 
