Illmatic at 20 and How It Shaped Me at 20

I can’t say enough that Illmatic is one of my favorite albums of all time. Not just because Nas is one of my two favorite rappers of all time but because it’s a timeless record that is a gold standard for lyricism and production being married so perfectly.

As the 20th anniversary is celebrated Saturday, I want to just share my reflections from hearing it for the first time. I believe that if I heard Illmatic at any other time, it might have resonated differently to me but I think the timing was perfect. So here we go.

Back in 2003, I was still exploring Nas. I loved Stillmatic and I was getting into God’s Son - which was the first Nas album I bought. I lived through the feud with Jay Z and was getting ready to enjoy Jay’s farewell on the Black Album.

It hit me to finally listen to Illmatic - an album I had heard of for years but never bothered to check yet. So I began to search and download the album. This was back when the Internet was so tricky, you might have to download stuff before bed and wait til you woke up to hear it. So there I was on Bearshare downloading every track to Illmatic.

Quentin Tarantino and Nas: If Pulp Fiction is Illmatic, Jackie Brown is It Was Written

Last night I was watching Pulp Fiction. Somehow it always seems to come on at night and it's led to me sharing some cool thoughts before. I got into a brief conversation on Twitter about it and right away, we mentioned how Jackie Brown was criminally underrated.

15 years after its release, it's still a great movie. A great movie about my city and a reminder that Pam Grier is a treasure of beauty/sass. But it's slept on by a lot of folks because the monster came before it. How do you follow up one of the most influential movies of the last 20 years? A movie that was getting high praise the minute it got released.