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Nas VibeZ


Nas

Nasir Jones released Illmatic in 1994 at twenty, and it is still routinely named the best rap album ever made. That has been a mixed blessing: every subsequent record has been measured against a debut made before he had any professional experience at all.

This playlist takes the sensible approach of mostly ignoring the famous material and building from the deep catalogue, which is where the case for him as a writer is actually strongest. He is a novelist's rapper — his best verses are constructed as scenes, with characters, dialogue and an ending.

His father is the jazz cornettist Olu Dara, who plays on Illmatic, which is a neat piece of lineage.

What to listen for

"One Mic" is the technical showpiece — a song that starts almost whispered and builds to a shout three times over, and back down again.

"Life's a Bitch" with AZ and Olu Dara is the Illmatic selection, and the trumpet at the end is his father.

"Book Of Rhymes" is the most formally interesting thing here: a song about leafing through an old notebook, abandoning half-written verses as he goes.

"Cherry Wine" with Amy Winehouse is the most beautiful record on the list and one of the last things she recorded.

"Cops Shot The Kid" with Kanye West is the most confrontational, and "Black President" is the 2008 record about Obama that is considerably more ambivalent than people remember.

The Distant Relatives tracks with Damian Marley — six of them here — are the most ambitious project in the catalogue: an album about Africa, the diaspora and return, made with a Jamaican collaborator, and it is much better than its modest reception.

"Last Real Nigga Alive" is the history lesson — a first-person account of nineties New York rap rivalries that functions as primary-source material.

Go deeper

Illmatic (1994) is the album, and it is ten tracks and thirty-nine minutes. It Was Written (1996) and Stillmatic (2001) are the next two.

Distant Relatives (2010) with Damian Marley and King's Disease II (2021) with Hit-Boy are the two later records most worth the time.

Why the deep cuts: a survey built from the famous singles would just restate the debut's reputation, which has overshadowed everything since. Built from album tracks instead, the case for him as a writer gets considerably stronger — these are constructed scenes with characters and endings, and they are where the novelist's instinct shows.

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