On my commute to College today, I look through my list of albums and decide to listen to one of my favorites that I hadn’t listened to in awhile… Illmatic. It got me to thinking, Nas’ Illmatic is to me, and many others, the archetypal perfect Hip Hop album. The flow of the music is brilliant and not once does the music become bland or boring. I can listen to any track on Illmatic and still enjoy it just as much as the first time I ever heard it. Genius.

Normally I dislike the standard album intro but Illmatic was different. The Genesis was like a thesis of everything brilliant in Hip Hop during the 90′s. The samples from Wild Style and Nas and AZ talking about their distaste of the radio is more than enough to send tingles down my spine. Following the brilliance of The Genesis is the first actual track, New York State of Mind, Nas rhymes poetically about his lifestyle yet keeps it on a street level.

---

Posted by LostMoniker on February 4th, 2011 :: Filed under LM's Mobile Minute
Tags :: 94, Brilliant, classic, illmatic, nas

---

I’ve listened to hundreds of Hip-Hop albums, of course encountering my fair share of great albums and to a similar degree, some god-awful ones. There are albums that I constantly come back to, generally because their lyrics – and to a lesser sense – production are top notch. While this piece is more opinionated then my prior articles, I’m treating this as a “personal” listing and not an “end all be all” list, and using it as a chance to recommend some classic albums for people who haven’t already encountered them.

---

Posted by LostMoniker on September 28th, 2008 :: Filed under Moniker's Top Ten
Tags :: be, binary star, black on both sides, cannibal ox, common, company flow, cormega, dj premier, emceeing, funcrusher plus, gangstarr, guru, hip hop, illmatic, j-live, masters of the universe, MF doom, moment of truth, mos def, nas, operation doomsday, the best part, the cold vein, the real, the realness, the true meaning, top ten

---