The Making of ILLMATIC

"I lay puzzled as I backtrack to earlier times
Nothings equivalent, to the New York state of mind."
-Nas

It's 1994, and I'm a 100 pound (if that) 9th grader, in a new high school, meeting new people who are just as awkward and anxious as I am, and we’re all trying to find a place to fit in. One of the better things about the high school that I went to, or rather one of the things that I appreciate it most for, is that it was a virtual cross-section of what New York was (and is) demographically, and, coincidentally, of what hip-hop as a whole used to be: one big melting-pot.

I went to one of the biggest and most famous magnet schools not only in NYC but in the US, so it wasn't just comprised of local neighborhood kids in the area going to their zone school, but rather it was made up of 3,000+ teenagers from all 5 boroughs and just about every single neighborhood within these boroughs, all under one roof, trying to find their place. Much the same, hip-hop was very similar. You could have street-poets or street-pharmacists. Didn’t matter, as long as the lyrics were gully, and the story was legit. You could have a De La or a Tribe, and then have an M.O.P or a Boot Camp. Didn’t matter, everyone was winning. And everyone was listening. To everything. As I said, we were all a bunch of teens trying to find our place in a new world, and I ended up finding mine around the same time that the game found Nas.

If you went to Bronx Science from 1993 to 1997, and you were into hip-hop...and you were broke...you probably knew Roger Galindo. Roger was a step ahead of the curve, and all of us, when it came to making a quick buck. This was all before the days of zShare, blogs, LimeWire...shit, even CDs. Roger had this 11"x6" plastic case he'd bring to school, and in it were an organized collection of assorted recordable audio cassette tapes. All clear, and all with a white label with a signature Sharpie’d title stating its contents, along with an upside down (or sideways, I can’t remember) smiley face to solidify its “Raj” bootleg authenticity. These cassette tapes would be how myself and a ton of other Bronx Science hip-hop heads got to know some of today’s modern day rap legends.

I got my first "Ready to Die" copy there. My first "Reasonable Doubt", too. My 2nd favorite purchase, and I will never forget this, was the "36 Chambers of Death" for $3. A "Raj" tape which I rewound at least 30 times on my Sony walkman until I memorized the entire "M-E-T-H-O-D Man". Before you jump to conclusions, calm down. Every - single - person that I know that bought these tapes from "Raj" would later cop all of these classics in stores. Either on tape (Purple if ya dig me), CD later on...or vinyl (I later started DJ'ing). That’s just out of respect, and because cover art used to be golden back then.

Well, this brings me to the point of all of this. In 1994, I was in 9th grade. And in 1994, Nas literally changed my life and how I looked at expression as an art-form. When I heard "Illmatic" for the first time, I didn’t even get most of it….but I got it. Granted, it may have taken some odd years to understand the impact that this album had on me, but over time it has become one of those things that happened during my generation that I can look back upon and really stamp it as being truly "timeless". When I die, wherever I go I just hope that they have "Memory Lane" on repeat...and a hundred bad shorties in nothing but aprons cooking.

For this post, I just had to go back, and reminisce about 9th grade, about Bronx Science, about Raj, and about a time when you could get something genuinely "good" for a very reasonably low-price…thanks to Roger Galindo.

Thank you Raj. And thank you to everyone who was there to share the Golden Era of rap with me.

The following is a XXL article that details the events during the making of Nas' first album "Illmatic". Read it when you have the time. It is worth it.

Click each picture and you can either download each jpg to zoom or "view full size"

Props to Thomas V. for the Blog Post that I took from his site, "The T.R.O.Y. Blog". Check it out. These are his words and links. Download the XXL article. Props to Steve Jerrick for putting me on.

When was the last time you bought a hip-hop magazine? Basically, I never buy new hip-hop magazines but I had to make an exception for the new XXL April 2009 Issue. In the beginning of this month when the magazine cover was revealed, I noticed that there was going to be an article commemorating the 15th Anniversary of Nas's Classic 1994 LP "Illmatic". With subtitles of DJ Premier, Large Pro, Pete Rock, & Q-Tip, I knew that it was going to be worth the reading.

Yesterday, after copping the issue, I immediately skipped to the "Illmatic" article. I was stunned by seeing these old hi-res '94 pictures of Nas; there's a picture of Premier, Large Pro, Faith, Nas, Q-Tip, & L.E.S in the studio. I would like to thanks Timmotep Aku, Carl Chery, Clover Hope, Rob Markman, Starrene Rhett, Anslem Samuel for taking a trip down to memory lane and compiling a classic article on a perfect album. Below are all the representers who each took their time to talk on the making-of of their incredible work on the track which they appeared on. This isn't something that you've seen before, you will learn a lot of new trivia...

Below that is the scan of the article.

Representers
Nas
Jungle
Faith Newman-Orbach(Executive Producer)
MC Serch
DJ Premier
Large Professor
L.E.S.
AZ
Olu Dara
Pete Rock
T La Rock
Busta Rhymes
Grand Wizard
Q-Tip

Download 9-Pages Scan (Hi-Res)

Make sure to support this issue by buying it at your local bookstore. This is the type of issue that will truly become a collectible. There are other noteworthy articles included in the issue that are worth reading after "Illmatic."

-- Thomas V