Nas ‎– Illmatic

Label:

Columbia – C 57684

Format:

Vinyl, LP, Album

Country:

Released:

19 Apr 1994

Genre:

Hip Hop

Style:

Tracklist Hide Credits

	40 Side North
A1	The Genesis	1:45
A2	N.Y. State Of Mind Engineer – Eddie Sancho Producer – DJ Premier	4:52
A3	Life's A Bitch Co-producer – Nas Engineer – Jason Vogel Producer – L.E.S. Rap [Featuring] – AZ Trumpet – Olu Dara	3:29
A4	The World Is Yours Engineer – Jamie Staub Producer – Pete Rock	4:50
A5	Halftime Engineer – Kevin Reynolds Producer – Large Professor	4:21
	41st Side South
B1	Memory Lane (Sittin' In Da Park) Engineer – Eddie Sancho Producer – DJ Premier	4:06
B2	One Love Engineer – Tim Latham Producer – Q-Tip	5:24
B3	One Time 4 Your Mind Engineer – Kevin Reynolds Producer – Large Professor	3:17
B4	Represent Engineer – Eddie Sancho Producer – DJ Premier	4:13
B5	It Ain't Hard To Tell Engineer – Stan Wallace Engineer [Mix] – Diego Garrido Engineer [Tracking] – Anton Pushansky* Producer – Large Professor	3:22

Credits

Art Direction – Jo DiDonato
Design – Aimee Macauley*
Executive Producer – Faith N., MC Serch
Photography – Danny Clinch

Notes

With printed inner sleeve.

Barcode and Other Identifiers

Barcode: 0 7464-57684-1 0
Matrix / Runout (Label Side A): AL 57684
Matrix / Runout (Label Side B): BL 57684
Other (Etchings Side A): AL-57684-1A 2-1 MASTERDISK TD
Other (Etchings Side B): BL-57684-1A 1-1

Other Versions (Showing 5 of 20) View All

Title, Format	Label	Cat#	Country	Year
Illmatic (CD, Album)	Columbia	CK 57684	US	1994
Illmatic (CD, Album)	Columbia, Columbia	475959 2, 01-475959-10	Europe	1994
Illmatic (Cass, Album)	Columbia	CT 57684	US	1994
Illmatic (LP, Album, RE)	Columbia	475959 1	Europe
Illmatic (LP, Album)	Simply Vinyl (S12)	SVLP 377	UK

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Reviews & Discussion

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glenncassis Mar 03, 2012

#27?!?!? Without question, one of the 5 greatest hip hop albums of all time. Period.

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Review by SirBonkers91 Oct 13, 2011 (edited 4 months ago)

Illmatic is the best hiphop album I’ve ever heard. That’s quite a feat as I listen to a lot of hiphop ( a lot) and NaS isn’t my favorite rapper. Nor does Illmatic contain my favorite hiphop song or even any of my top ten. Because I’m too picky to have absolute favorites or top tens… But as an album of original songs you can listen to all the way through this is about as close to perfection the genre will ever get. It consists of ten tracks overall with none of them being blatant attempts at getting radio hits and only one of them not being good for anything, but that would be the intro which technically doesn’t even count as a song. Also, it being an intro means that it’s at the very beginning and you’ll only have to press the skip button once. After that there’s nine songs worth of uncut dope. Off course some songs are better than others but nothing on here will make you want to break the cd in half and slit your wrists as listening to Justin Bieber’s My Worlds does. In fact, if you like the kind of hiphop I like most if not all of it will make your jaw drop to the floor and make you jizz in your pants. Hiphop greats like DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor and Q-Tip produce some of that music that just isn’t made like this any more. Music producing technology is partially to blame, I think. Even though this like the absolute majority of hiphop is electronically made this sounds hella organic compared to say… (ugh) Drake. The producers seem to have plundered a record store and subsequently sliced up a lot of music to create dusty, booming, ominous audio collages for NaS to show off his perfect breath control, intricate wordplay, deft imagery, storytelling abilities and funny punchlines over which he used to talk about life in his native Queensbridge as he knew it, be it first or second hand. In short: ILLMATIC is CRAZY DELICIOUS.

[read the rest of my review on http://straightfromthecrates.com/2011/08/17/nas-illmatic/ and like my website on facebook here http://www.facebook.com/pages/straightfromthecratescom/230354327015145 ]

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DJ_Frostbite Feb 05, 2011

Best Hip Hop album of all time.

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