Controversy
Superstar
Illmatic 5/5
IWW 4.5/5
I Am 4/5 (OG I Am - 5/5)
Nastradamus - 3/5
Stillmatic - 4.5/5
And I stand on those ratings
98-01 Era Nas
- Thread starter Controversy
- Start date
Illmatic 5/5
IWW 4.5/5
I Am 4/5 (OG I Am - 5/5)
Nastradamus - 3/5
Stillmatic - 4.5/5
And I stand on those ratings
Controversy
Superstar
I wanna say Summer 2000...DJ Clue the great ones pt 2 mixtape
perfectblack999
All Star
What’s crazy to me is that most big hip hop fans aren’t even aware of all the material he released in this period. We’re talking about maybe 3 albums worth of 4-5 mic tracks.
But really only hardcore nas fans are aware of them
But really only hardcore nas fans are aware of them
The Great Ones Pt. 2 by DJ Clue
Get all the lyrics to songs on The Great Ones Pt. 2 and join the Genius community of music scholars to learn the meaning behind the lyrics.
genius.com
what a fire fukking tape wow
right, that would line up exactly with me hearing it around fall 2000, or at least getting it on a burned CD. Had to pay my homie to make it for me.
all the dope September 2000 release singles were on there, only 4 Da Fam had been out for a minute, since late 1999, but Best Of Me, (remix) Imagine That, That's Me, all crazy hyped songs that summer
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His voice started changing to me around that time...like losing that rawness/streetness that it always had. I don't think a lot of people even realized it at the time, they probably still don't, lol...but listen to Illmatic/IWW Nas then listen to later Nas...just strictly voice wise, madd different. Not a young to old thing either, just the grit in it started disappearing...naturally so as he was in mansions and suburb environments and not in Queensbridge all day on the block anymore.
Playaz Eyez
Veteran
Good thread here. This really was an interesting time, I like more of that Nas now than I did back then.
It’s the slang and his accent. That nikka NY slang and accent were heavy on Illmatic/IWW cuz he was still kid from the block. nikka had a whole lotta “nomsayin’” and “son/thun” talk, that 5% knowledge god verbiage lmao
Even in his interviews you could tell the nikka was reserved and not media trained. After 96 he started more world touring, seeing new places and things it kinda expanded his vernacular. His voice also got a lil more bass after 96
He still has one of the greatest rap voices ever after that period, it was just more refined. I definitely get what you saying tho
I lament on Styles P and Lupe’s actual old voices all the time
I think the deaths of Pac and BIG weighed heavily on him. You could tell on most The Firm album tracks his heart wasn't in it. Most of the OG I Am was a real dark and personal album reflective of where he was at and you could tell he was locked in. Biggest what if of Nas career obviously is if the bootleg don't happen, Nastradamus don't exist, and I Am is the best of the tracks that got scattered across I Am, Nastradamus, QB Finest, Lost Tapes and Unreleased. The perception would have been different. Does the clash with Jay just remain a cold war throwing subs back and forth? What's the next album and 5-10 years look like for him?
, salute for real.
Controversy
Superstar
The Great Ones Pt. 2 by DJ Clue
Get all the lyrics to songs on The Great Ones Pt. 2 and join the Genius community of music scholars to learn the meaning behind the lyrics.
what a fire fukking tape wow
right, that would line up exactly with me hearing it around fall 2000, or at least getting it on a burned CD. Had to pay my homie to make it for me.
all the dope September 2000 release singles were on there, only 4 Da Fam had been out for a minute, since late 1999, but Best Of Me, (remix) Imagine That, That's Me, all crazy hyped songs that summer
What's crazy is that this Nas freestyle birthed his Stillmatic style
Listen to the difference between his flowing & rhyming prowess on this vs Nastradamus and then compare it to Stillmatic
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I forget which VH1 documentary it was, but it was on TV back in the days when Nas was doing an on-camera interview basically re-paraphrasing "you're da man," where he said he wanted to pack something away for a rainy day and make his exit in his rap career, how he was going to dabble in this and that and 'it was going to be over'. he said that 'I Am...' got leaked but he wanted to just drop jewels and be a responsible rapper and teach the youth by making songs like "I Can" and remaking the songs that he grew up listening to from the rappers that he looked up to and make to hip hop fun again (by directing sampling songs or shouting artists out...he also paraphrased kool g rap from the original version of big daddy kane's raw on Disciple, etc)...he did the QB finest project to put on his neighborhood and his next album was supposed to be different but then he got dissed by Jay on summer jam 2001, so he quickly scrapped all that and went another approach by calling out all rappers on the radio (power 105.1) that he knows has talent but promotes gang life or makes a mockery of the culture and then just went the street life approach of getting fat joe involved and using murder inc so show he has support from other black owned labels at the time to oppose rocafella...he basically derailed his previous plan and dropped stillmatic as a response, responded some more on god's son, and then tried to redo his original plans on 'street's disciple' with that double album completed and went the opposite route of mainstream songs from his previous attempt on 'I Am'
It's funny how Nas basically put on power 105 by holding concerts and promoting their station and Nas can't even get a shout out from them when he drops his album nowadays, where Jay basically used payola money to convert charlemagne and the rest of breakfast club to support Roc Nation artists by default. that station isn't about grass roots movements from their backyard anymore and consolidated into being part of the machine. Nas basically tried to convert power 105 into a homegrown new york station to support local artist but it got gobbled up into becoming another hot 97 anyways
we knew tensions were brewing behind the scenes with jay and nas with nas dropping eye for an eye freestyle back in 1999 after he saw Carmen with Jay and he knew it was on. jay was initially using memphis bleek to diss nas and then dropped 'is that your chick' subliminally dissing the carmen situation. it used to be as a listener, you had to wait a year before you caught the subliminal response from one of them based on what the other person did. but they were doing the same thing on the same year, like both of them put on their crew in 2000 with qb's finest and roc la familia, and jay was basically chasing or spoiling nas release dates
on John Blaze, I always thought that Nas basically did a takeback compliment because Jay was known for making the song "dead presidents" because he sampled Nas but dead presidents was also a 1995 movie that premiered after Illmatic, so when that Nas line came on talking about some guy saying something from "Dead Presidents", we thought he was going to quote some introspective jay-z line, but he instead just quoted the guy from the movie about "money to burn", so as listeners, it was like a crescendo of maybe Nas finally acknowledging Jay back in 2001 just to realize it was a takeback compliment and Nas wasn't talking about Jay at all and nas probably had this look on his face as he said it
nas was making a lot of songs with salaam remi late into this era probably because unlike other producers with unreleased tracks that end up on mixtapes, as mentioned on this thread, salaam's stuff didn't get leaked much comparably, outside of that one john lennon sample that somehow pitbull managed to get on, but we still have to hear all the stuff he did with salaam. salaam was like the original hit boy that nas was doing back to back songs with but he was on the major label's release schedule of only allowed to release on certain numerology dates and all those restrictions of how many tracks to put on a CD and having A&Rs pair Nas up with random producers to make singles to push sales, so this new run with hit is basically that same work ethic but being allowed to release stuff on his own accord while dealing with an independent label's finances
we have yet to hear Nas' 2000 album in full, the scrapped parts of God's Son going on an all out industry war before his mom died and he made it have more religious overtones...i remember seeing the barcode on God's Son and it wasn't even categorized as gangsta rap like his other albums -- it was labeled as christian rap in some stores and it was sometimes shelved in another section apart from his other CDs -- the scene from 'hate me now' for 'jesus walks' and 'god's son' was basically the blueprint for kanye's gospel album...we have yet to hear whatever the 3rd disk was for street's disciple, whatever plans he had in 2003 with murder inc and far joe, a ton of unreleased stuff and scrapped project ideas during this era...the whirlwind of industry politics and jay-z dissing him delineated us to this timeline...mike tyson didn't want to lose so he bit holyfield's ear -- that's basically jay dropping supa ugly and biting nas in more ways than one, by pushing the nuclear option on exposing his cheating affair on carmen back in 2001 but it backfired...nas was too powerful ("your arms are too short to box with god" that jay later bit in his raps, in addition to that picture of nas wearing boxing gloves in the ring) and if it was a clean fight without the mentioning of wives and kids in rap battles, nas would have won more by a land slide and it was hot 97 who did the poll, so it was already biased with them promoting jay and having their 'takeover show' just to have a funeral for rocafella once ether dropped
i'll write some more shyt i remember from that era later
It's funny how Nas basically put on power 105 by holding concerts and promoting their station and Nas can't even get a shout out from them when he drops his album nowadays, where Jay basically used payola money to convert charlemagne and the rest of breakfast club to support Roc Nation artists by default. that station isn't about grass roots movements from their backyard anymore and consolidated into being part of the machine. Nas basically tried to convert power 105 into a homegrown new york station to support local artist but it got gobbled up into becoming another hot 97 anyways
we knew tensions were brewing behind the scenes with jay and nas with nas dropping eye for an eye freestyle back in 1999 after he saw Carmen with Jay and he knew it was on. jay was initially using memphis bleek to diss nas and then dropped 'is that your chick' subliminally dissing the carmen situation. it used to be as a listener, you had to wait a year before you caught the subliminal response from one of them based on what the other person did. but they were doing the same thing on the same year, like both of them put on their crew in 2000 with qb's finest and roc la familia, and jay was basically chasing or spoiling nas release dates
on John Blaze, I always thought that Nas basically did a takeback compliment because Jay was known for making the song "dead presidents" because he sampled Nas but dead presidents was also a 1995 movie that premiered after Illmatic, so when that Nas line came on talking about some guy saying something from "Dead Presidents", we thought he was going to quote some introspective jay-z line, but he instead just quoted the guy from the movie about "money to burn", so as listeners, it was like a crescendo of maybe Nas finally acknowledging Jay back in 2001 just to realize it was a takeback compliment and Nas wasn't talking about Jay at all and nas probably had this look on his face as he said it
nas was making a lot of songs with salaam remi late into this era probably because unlike other producers with unreleased tracks that end up on mixtapes, as mentioned on this thread, salaam's stuff didn't get leaked much comparably, outside of that one john lennon sample that somehow pitbull managed to get on, but we still have to hear all the stuff he did with salaam. salaam was like the original hit boy that nas was doing back to back songs with but he was on the major label's release schedule of only allowed to release on certain numerology dates and all those restrictions of how many tracks to put on a CD and having A&Rs pair Nas up with random producers to make singles to push sales, so this new run with hit is basically that same work ethic but being allowed to release stuff on his own accord while dealing with an independent label's finances
we have yet to hear Nas' 2000 album in full, the scrapped parts of God's Son going on an all out industry war before his mom died and he made it have more religious overtones...i remember seeing the barcode on God's Son and it wasn't even categorized as gangsta rap like his other albums -- it was labeled as christian rap in some stores and it was sometimes shelved in another section apart from his other CDs -- the scene from 'hate me now' for 'jesus walks' and 'god's son' was basically the blueprint for kanye's gospel album...we have yet to hear whatever the 3rd disk was for street's disciple, whatever plans he had in 2003 with murder inc and far joe, a ton of unreleased stuff and scrapped project ideas during this era...the whirlwind of industry politics and jay-z dissing him delineated us to this timeline...mike tyson didn't want to lose so he bit holyfield's ear -- that's basically jay dropping supa ugly and biting nas in more ways than one, by pushing the nuclear option on exposing his cheating affair on carmen back in 2001 but it backfired...nas was too powerful ("your arms are too short to box with god" that jay later bit in his raps, in addition to that picture of nas wearing boxing gloves in the ring) and if it was a clean fight without the mentioning of wives and kids in rap battles, nas would have won more by a land slide and it was hot 97 who did the poll, so it was already biased with them promoting jay and having their 'takeover show' just to have a funeral for rocafella once ether dropped
i'll write some more shyt i remember from that era later
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Controversy
Superstar
Nas in Rolling Stone:
Nastradamus (1999)
The song was a EPMD sample and I just freestyled it. I was riding high off multi-platinum sales off I Am…, and just didn’t want to do anything but freestyle that single and put it out. We had a concept to make the video 3D, but we didn’t figure out how to get all the glasses to people and time was against us. Glasses were made, but obviously not enough for every household, so we fukked that one up a little bit. On that album, there’s a couple of songs that have a certain sound to it that doesn’t sound like anything else I’ve done. And it was a gray area in my life and that album represents that gray area. It was personal stuff that I'd rather not elaborate on. But I have nothing against that album.
I Am…, [released earlier that year], was originally supposed to be a double album, but the songs leaked and that killed it for me. I didn’t want to touch it. I hated that because no one’s supposed to hear a song before it’s time, so if that happens, I didn't fukk with the record. It’s over. The record never existed. So I went and started brand new music. At the time, my brother Jungle was managing Noriega and Nature and he was getting a lot of beats from guys that were just blasting in the business, like Dame Grease and Swizz Beatz, and those beats was ahead of their time and I didn’t understand them that well. Then DMX and Nori really made them happen and I was able to go grab Dame Grease, [who produced four songs from Nastradamus] and be like, "Yo, work with me." The Nostradamus thing was about the end of the world being the year 2000, so my record would be dropping right toward the end of the world.
Nastradamus (1999)
The song was a EPMD sample and I just freestyled it. I was riding high off multi-platinum sales off I Am…, and just didn’t want to do anything but freestyle that single and put it out. We had a concept to make the video 3D, but we didn’t figure out how to get all the glasses to people and time was against us. Glasses were made, but obviously not enough for every household, so we fukked that one up a little bit. On that album, there’s a couple of songs that have a certain sound to it that doesn’t sound like anything else I’ve done. And it was a gray area in my life and that album represents that gray area. It was personal stuff that I'd rather not elaborate on. But I have nothing against that album.
I Am…, [released earlier that year], was originally supposed to be a double album, but the songs leaked and that killed it for me. I didn’t want to touch it. I hated that because no one’s supposed to hear a song before it’s time, so if that happens, I didn't fukk with the record. It’s over. The record never existed. So I went and started brand new music. At the time, my brother Jungle was managing Noriega and Nature and he was getting a lot of beats from guys that were just blasting in the business, like Dame Grease and Swizz Beatz, and those beats was ahead of their time and I didn’t understand them that well. Then DMX and Nori really made them happen and I was able to go grab Dame Grease, [who produced four songs from Nastradamus] and be like, "Yo, work with me." The Nostradamus thing was about the end of the world being the year 2000, so my record would be dropping right toward the end of the world.
It was an experimental time, but the fact that Nas even states that it was a dark time explains why I'm feeling that era so much. Sorry, it was a sad time for the God, but I love when Nas spits introspective rhymes over moody music, and there was a lot of that in the era. I'm from Chicago, where it's cloudy and grim every damn day, so I feel that moody, introspective vibe. Nas spits about the streets, issues, street drama, and beef; it represents what many of us were exposed to in hoods nationwide.
Yo! Let's try to keep this thread bumped.
FunkDoc1112
Heavily Armed
Nas' Illmatic voice is different from his It Was Written voice though. Nas' delivery was rawer on Illmatic. On It Was Written it's super polished and smooth, and his voice is even a bit higher pitched. Then 98-02 he went back to a rougher, deeper delivery but more polished than Illmatic. And since about 2009 his delivery's become way more aggressive. And since the late 2010s his flow's a bit more rigid and glued to the beat than it used to be. A Pitchfork writer described it well:
"As late as 2012’s “Nasty,” he was staking his albums on ostentatious displays of raw technique. Here he seems to stride atop Hit-Boy’s beats where he once would have scurried back and forth through a network of tunnels he’d dug beneath them. On “WTF SMH,” he makes nearly every point—about Big Daddy Kane’s influence and how profitable his publishing has been for MC Serch, about “cowards” who “cut the tough guy shyt”—land with percussive single-syllable bursts."
En Sabah Nur
The First
The narrative on Nas pre-Takeover would have definitely been different if I Am had not been one of the first internet bootlegging casualties. Instead of mid and wack albums he would have been riding the wave of an all-time classic into the 2000's, and Jay-Z and others don't even have ammo to come at him. That original album dropping changes a good 3 years of hip-hop history