HOME FEATURES COLUMNS FILM LIT MUSIC BLOG CONTACT		NAS :: ILLMATIC LIVE YOUNG, DIE PRETTY (taken from Classic Material) By Hua Hsu Hip-hop is a culture obsessed with heroes, and whether they are the result of manufacturing or earnest hard work, they are rarely as immovable as they think. A culture whose music and approach assume a short attention span necessarily treats its stars the same way, and the debate about hip-hop's truly untouchable names would be a relatively short one. The days of Nas' undisputed spot atop that dawg-pile may be long gone, but he will always have his place in the discussion, not simply as a gifted lyricist, but as a prodigy. Nas came into our world fully formed, first as a snot-nosed upstart who nonchalantly bragged that he "went to hell for snuffing Jesus" back when he was twelve, then as a twenty-year-old counting stacks with his partner AZ on "The Genesis," the weightily-named introduction to his debut, Illmatic. There are no moments of vulnerability on the album, no rags to put the riches of today in proper perspective. He arrives as a manchild in a broken land: a man because there is no childishness or uncertainty in his pose but a child because it is so obviously and precisely a pose and, as with many who inherit a precocious brain but a plain heart, he relies more on instinct and response than emotional certainty, conviction or stability. It was as though the questions one wrestles in youth (idealism, material, morality, "the future")-the mortal world-didn't matter, for Nas arrived immortal. As such, Illmatic is fearless, shocking and literally unbelievable. There was a brazenness to Nas' "understandable smooth," Yeah-I-said-it delivery, a cool absence of thought or hope (maybe both), and whether he was indeed the journal or the journalist, there were few images as crisp and brags as cold as his. I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death. Cause I'm as ill as a convict who kills for phone time. I rap in front of more ni**az than on the slave ships. On "One Love," his description of an over-anxious, would-be young thug from around the way-"Shorty's laugh was cold-blooded as he spoke so foul/Only twelve trying to tell me that he liked my style/Then I rose, wiping the blunt's ash from my clothes/Then froze, only to blow the herb smoke through my nose"-wasn't just a dope rap lyric; it was an amazing piece of writing, regardless of age. Through it all, Nas himself seems to seek very little in the exchange. If he is to be believed, he was already very rich, and though he would later try and refashion himself as a martyr-in-progress, on Illmatic he seemed too young and jaded to care much about any end, because in the end, nothing happens. Life's a bitch, as his song goes, but then what? Do you find redemption in ether? Philosophy? Do you pray for a merciful God? No. Life's a bitch and then you die, and the only thing Nas seems to believe in is the grace of falling. Religion clearly doesn't matter ("Cause yeah, we were beginners in the hood as five-percenters/But somethin' must of got in us cause all of us turned to sinners" from AZ's verse on "Life's a Bitch") and when Nas boasts that he "loves committin' sins" ("Represent"), you almost believe him. Almost because there's still something behind Nas' eternally negative, harum-scarum worldview-not fear, but a dim consciousness of his own status as immortal. It is the belief that, though we may not live to see tomorrow, someone will. And, with history as our witness, we better seem pretty fucking fly to them. On Illmatic, Nas cared less about his place in God's eyes than his place in history, and history alone provided young Nas with a sense of salvation; a sense that the depravity surrounding him would one day be enshrined as the conditions for his genius. The album, like the man himself, excels because it is obsessed with the bright, fawning legacy that trails faithfully behind. He says as much on "Nas is Like," a song he wrote during the Illmatic sessions: "But what's it all worth? Can't take it with you under this Earth/Rich men died and tried, but none of it worked/They just rob your grave, I'd rather be alive and paid/Before my number's called, history's made." There's something alluring and inevitably unsatisfying about seeing someone so nihilistic go about life, especially at such a young age. You can say you want to (or will) die before you get old, but those words feel cheap and flat when you live just cautious enough to survive well into your late-20s and early-30s. When you grow up against the anti-philosophy you lay out in the dim idealism of youth, you go from old school to old fool, and somewhere along the way, old Nas realized that he wanted redemption. He thought he would find it by earning the plaques and sales that he rightfully deserved, refashioning himself as a pretty thug and then again as the champion for the masses, finding solidarity with lesser cliques (Bravehearts, Murder Inc.) and beefing with Jay-Z, the man who took the best parts of Nas' blueprint and gave it both corporate and heartfelt dimensions. But nothing worked, and these muted expressions of fear only served to make Illmatic seem that much more unbelievable. As a kid, Nas didn't fear God; he just thought he was better, and he wanted people to know that tomorrow. Unfortunately that next day came, and the boy who was ahead of his time grew into a man forever captive to it.