Hip-Hop Battle #34: Nas - Illmatic | 30 year tribute (results + process)

In 1994 20 year old Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones (aka Nas) worked with Large Professor and an all star line up of Hip-hop’s most iconic producers Q-Tip, Pete Rock, DJ Premier and L.E.S to create a perfect 10 track album. Illmatic stands as one of the greatest musical contributions of all time.

This challenge is to two fold: make a beat that honours this album while also making it something fresh and meaningful for you:

:1234: You can use up to 4 of Nas’s rhymes from any song on Illmatic. ie: So analyze me, surprise me, but can’t magmatize me. Scannin’ while you’re plannin’ ways to sabotage me count as two rhymes. The rhymes should come from at least two different songs on the album. Think of using vocal snippets that mean something to you rather than laying a Nas acapella over your beat.

:trumpet: Bring in your father’s music. Nas’s father Olu Dara is a musician and had a massive influence on Nas’s life both as an artist and a young man - he plays cornet on Life’s a Bitch the third track on Illmatic. Find a way to connect with the music your father/father figure loved (or even played) that influenced you - and bring this into your beat.

:record_button: Sample any two records that were used on Illmatic DJ Premier and Q-Tip both talk about how their creative process with Nas started by sitting down with him (and his crew!) and listening to records together until Nas would say “Stop - can you hook that up?”. Find a couple samples from songs that were used on Illmatic and re-interpret/re-use to make something fresh.

:rainbow: Use anything else! You can use any drums, live instruments, synths and other samples you want to make your beat come to life.

:timer_clock: Keep your beat under 3 minutes

:calendar: Upload your beat by Tuesday October 1st Sunday October 6th


:basketball: To kick off the discussion here are a few prompts:

  • Tell a story of the first time you heard Illmatic: describe the scene, how you felt and who you were with.
  • Drop in links to some of your favorite Illmatic tributes, video interviews or anything else Illmatic related you want to share.
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@Doug @flipinfantile @Yabba @SierraOskar @looms @malus_mons @schoolbabyboy @monquixote @Sleepyhead @FNKSTRNG

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@PineappleDave @electricthing @Lailai @blaize @Synu @shigginpit @eerieacid @NVVI @rockpapergoat @Unifono

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@drrumble @Maisin @LyingDalai @1-2 @Jedilicious @Ooly @sleepside @aarb420 @philroyjenkins @Symian

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Very dope challenge! Not gonna make any promises, but I’ll definitely try :blush:

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Great theme :heart:
Hope I can rejoin this time

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probably won’t be able to participate for this round as I’m deep into a stressful job application process and also trying to push myself to produce some original music (more techno based stuff), but I’d like to share my experience seeing Nas live with Damian Marley a little over 10 years ago. Wasn’t very familiar with his music at the time, but thoroughly enjoyed the high energy and performance nonetheless. Appreciate the at and wish everyone a happy beating-making process! Will give the final playlist a listen as always!

Dope challenge, I have to come back on this one !!

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Just getting out of a bad musical funk. Hoping to keep it up and get in on this one.

This Jungle interview is light on info (the lost notebook story is always good), but I love how you can tell how much he loves his brother.

Illmatic was not the first time I heard Nas. That was the Men in Black soundtrack, which has a bunch of incredible loosies from Tribe, de la, and the Roots, but also “Escobar 97”. It was the first CD I ever bought

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Would love to participate, but my schedule is fully booked until the end of October.

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@sleepside - this is the perfect way to get deeper into that funk and embrace it!

I just watched that same interview with Nas’s brother - imagine what a flow Nas was in to be able to write a notebook full of rhymes, lose the notebook, start all over, record an album and when the notebook was returned honestly be like “Nah - don’t need it anymore”.

Maybe it was just exercises for him :slight_smile: And the fact that someone delivered the notebook to his house, thats pretty cool.

That Escobar 97 track swings man - I don’t remember hearing it at the time. The tracks I remember from that period after his second album was “You gave me power” crazy story telling about a gun that gets passed from youth to youth… and of course the Lauryn Hill collabo - If I ruled the world.

The beats are always so hypnotic that give space for him to tell his stories…

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Ok - so I want to tell a story about the first time I heard the Illmatic album from start to finish but first I want to set up a bit of context. Watch this video and feel the state of NY Hip-hop in 1992 and then feel Nas step on the scene (1:30 in). It’s his first video appearance ever and only his second recorded track (the first being Live at the BBQ with Large Professor and a Toronto Hip-hop group called the Main Source). Hip-hop was changed forever.

Oh yeah, take a look at the youtube comments - they speak volumes

The rapper, MC Serch went on to be the Executive Producer for Nas’s Illmatic record and helped him sign a record deal with Columbia

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For those of you who haven’t seen So Wassup - it’s DJ Premier telling the stories of making beats. Salute the :floppy_disk: ! Its amazing, (Already on episode #58). The series gives the background story for so many tracks that I used to spin and played again and again - it makes them mean even more. Listening to his stories is like hearing an encyclopaedia get written page by page by an amazing narrator.

So on Episode #6 here is Premier’s story of first working with Nas. (He mentions how Q-Tip mde a pause tape beat :play_or_pause_button: for five minutes - that is some serious pre-digital shit!)

Then after that - listen to the full track

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I just finished listening to Illmatic - all 39 minutes and 48 seconds - outside my place at night with headphones thinking I might hear the rhymes I want to use on my beat.

Nas’s lines felt like they were in the millions…

Oh yeah - I also thought of a crazy beat battle concept - it made me think of @malus_mons - we as producers/beat makers should sing our own choruses like Qtip (One Love) and Pete Rock (The world is yours) :grinning:

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Can I use a Nas AI voice? I couldn’t write a good lyric if my life depended on it

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I certainly won’t be recording my voice for a chorus haha, I don’t even have a mic or a studio for a kick off, just a digitakt and a Bluetooth speaker.

But if anyone is interested, there’s a zip of all the illmatic samples on the online archives, I thought I better make a start today and just found it

Edit: the link seems to embed as a player but they’re all online as a zip

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I mean, I could try, but it would sound more like the outro of Aesop Rock’s “Coffee” than “The World is Yours” :sweat_smile:

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Just to be clear - I was imagining that we would sample Nas’s Illmatic rhymes in any number of ways:

  • :musical_note: straight up sample his lines from one of the Illmatic original tracks complete with instruments/beats
  • :microphone: from one of the original acapellas like “It aint hard to tell” in which you can hear him flipping pages in his rhyme book and clearing his throat between verses
  • :control_knobs: Any form of stem separation though I find some lose their punch - but all depends how you want to use it
  • :man_singer:t6: record yourself/friend or cat rapping/singing Nas’s rhymes
  • :robot: and now @malus_mons suggestions - tell a AI voice to spit the rhymes

How’s that?

@Yabba - that is a spartan setup bro. What if you record into your phone as a voice note - send it to yourself and see how that comes out. :phone:

One thing I want to do is make a beat, transmit it over the FM frequency using one of those phone adapters for your car and then record it again using my boombox’s tape deck. Give it that authentic 1990’s-mixtape-recorded-off-the-radio sound :radio:. Local college radio shows is how I used to hear my next favorite hiphop track.

@Doug you ever tried this? I know you have a bag of tricks to get that grainy texture to your beats

PS @Yabba is this the collection you were talking about? Illmatic (The Samples Edition) | matic

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Yeah I could record it in my phone but it would probably (definitely) come out terrible.
Haha.
I probably wouldn’t be into it if that becomes a mandatory rule in this battle but would look forward to listening to the submissions all the same.

PS That isn’t the same compilation, I found it as a zip on a 2cd album comp on Internet Archive.

It did have the samples for the remixes too which may or may not be allowed :thinking: