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Favorite Memory Involving 'Illmatic':
"I was a freshman in high school, and my boys I was running with, they were much older, I was running with a bunch of seniors. So, one of my best friends had come to pick me up from school, 'cause I had been talking to this girl on the phone for a couple days and needed a ride to get to her house. On the way over there, he had 'Illmatic' playing in the tape deck. If I remember correctly, he had 'It Ain't Hard to Tell' playing and that was one of my first times hearing it. So I was like 'Who is this n---- rapping over Michael Jackson?' And he was like 'Yo, this Nas.' And understand, I was like the biggest Micheal Jackson fan ever as a kid, so, to hear somebody rhyming over 'Human Nature,' at first it hurt me like, 'F---, I didn't get to do that, like, he beat me to it.' But, riding in the car, listening to that, and I just remember saying 'Aww s---, this s--- is dope as f---.'
I don't know if I liked the song that much because I knew I was about to get the girl as well, if that sweetened it. So, I got to the girl house and after that, she was my girlfriend. Well, at least for a couple weeks. But it was cool while it lasted."
Favorite Song From the Album:
"If you had me at gunpoint, I'd probably say 'Represent.' It's a favorite for me because it has all the elements that are not supposed to work. Like, the sounds that Premo used, it almost sounds like some Christmas carol s---. So, that's just not supposed to work in the hip-hop context. Two, there's no real hook other than his boy shouting 'represent.' Having your friends in the booth can go really good or really bad. And most of the time, it goes really bad. So, that was just a record where it was not supposed to work. If you was to just say on paper Premo gonna chop up this Christmas sounding s--- and I'm just gonna round up all the n----s in Queensbridge I can find and have them scream 'represent' and that's gonna be the joint. So, the fact that he was able to take those two things and actually make it work, I just thought that was genius.
I'm also a big stickler for the next to last song on a album being fire. Because it almost has to give you a bittersweet feeling that the album is about to be over. So, 'Represent' comes and kills s--- and then 'It Ain't Hard to Tell' is like the encore."
Favorite Beat From the Album:
"Let me think hard about this. Favorite beat, probably 'Memory Lane.' Again, for me it has a lot to do with placement. Being the age I was when 'Illmatic' came out, I listened to it on tape. So, a big experience with tape [back then] is your first song that kicks off side two has got to be the jam. Because it's almost like your starting a new chapter of your book. Another one of my favorites, just as a sidebar, the only other rapper that I can hear that kinda did that, around that era, was 'Street Struck' by Big L. It had that same kind of feel, it was a melodic track, but it also had a sense of eeriness to it as well. Memory Lane has a sense of nostalgia and it's like you have a sense of nostalgia of a person that it's reflecting. For lack of a better word, it's a pretty track, but he's spitting some good ass s--- over it. It was just something for me that I just really liked that beat and it was one of my favorite beats of that time."
If You Could've Added a Guest Verse to Any Track on the Album, Which One Would It Have Been?
"I don't know [laughs]. I'm listening to the album trying to think about what Nas song I would take Nas off of, and that's some pretty f---ed up s--- to think. Like that's some hard s---, like, what song or verse from 'Illmatic' I would take Nas off of. But if I could add a verse to any song, I would probably say 'Life's a Bitch.' At the time [of the album's release], I was 15 and that was the time that as much as my mother didn't want to hear anything hip-hop, it was just noise, for her to hear me over Gap Band's 'Yearning For Your Love,' that would've earned me a lot of points. That actually would have got me plays at our family reunion [laughs]. If I'm rapping over Charlie Wilson at 15, that would've been a go. So, I would pick that one because of the track and the subject matter.
Plus, I like the fact that 'Illmatic' only had one guest appearance on it, so, if I would have two guest appearances on the album, I would have them on the same song, so ain't nobody else coming in and getting in the way of Nas' verse. Like, lets get y'all two n----s on this one jam together, and then this s--- over. It's back to Nas again."
