5 Things I Learned After Watching "Time Is Illmatic"

I remember the first time I heard Nas’ classic debut “Illmatic” like it happened three seconds ago. In April of 1994, I was an annoying six-year-old who wasn’t allowed to listen to any rap music. To the chagrin of my older cousins, it was all R&B divas, all of the time.

One day, my 16-year-old cousin was at my house and my mom asked him to watch me for a little bit while she ran to the grocery store. We played endless games of “Sonic the Hedgehog” on my Sega until I got bored. I went and grabbed my red Sony Walkman and hit play and began to sing at the top of my lungs, “I WANNA BE DOWN WITH WHAT YOU’RE GOING THROUGH! I WANNA BE DOWN! I WANNA BE DOWN WITH YOU!” This was my jam at the time so he had grown tired of my off-key Brandy impersonation. He got so mad he threw the Sega cartridge he was in the midst of blowing into at my head and it left a scar in the middle of my forehead.

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“Shut your little ass up! Tired of you singing that dumb ass song!” My cousin screamed.

After my tears threatened to snitch on him, he pacified me with one of his rap tapes that I wasn’t allowed to listen to. I hit play and became mesmerized by the flow of Nas’ words. I can’t say I fully grasped an understanding of the world he was describing, but it made me feel something emotionally. That’s exactly what happened when I saw the documentary “Time Is Illmatic.”

The documentary told the tale of the making of one of the most influential Hip-Hop classics ever created. Not only did the documentary tug on my heartstrings by bringing some long-forgotten memories back to the forefront of my mind, it taught me a few things I never knew about the Hip-Hop legend.

Check out five things I learned after seeing the documentary “Time Is Illmatic,” which was written by Erik G. Parker and directed by One9.

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Nas Was A Gifted Trumpet Player

Around the time Nas was discovering different worlds through books, he was also honing his skills as a musician. He began learning the trumpet at a young age and was very good at it. However, His father jazz trumpeter Olu Dara took the instrument away from Nas around the time he was seven because he felt Nas’s lips were too underdeveloped to play the instrument. He told Nas he would give it back once his lips got a little stronger so that he would be a more masterful player. When Olu Dara went to give Nas the trumpet back when he was 10, Nas rebuffed the offer and said, “I got a new thing now.” That was rhyming.

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The Wrong Parent Gets Credit For Nas’ Rapping Talent

Because Nas’ father is a jazz trumpeter, everyone automatically assumes that all of Nas’ musical talent comes from his paternal side. According to Nas’ younger brother, Jungle, we’ve got it all wrong. Yes, Olu Dara traveled all over the world playing his trumpet, but Nas’ mother Ann Jones helped cultivate Nas’ curiosity for the world and encouraged him to express himself through his art–be it drawing, poetry, or rhyming. Jungle made it perfectly clear in the documentary, “Anything that has to do with Nas is all because of our mother.”

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Roxanne Shante Threatened to Beat Him Up

As Nas was beginning to plot his strategy into the music  game, he and his friends were spitting rhymes in their Queensbridge projects hallway when rap superstar Roxanne Shante walked in the building. She heard the small crew rapping and was impressed. She asked the crew to open for her at one of the Queensbridge park jams scheduled fora few weeks later. Nas and his friends readily accepted, but didn’t take it as serious as they should have. A week or two later Roxanne Shante came back to see how their set was coming along and Nas and company kept messing up and laughing. Shante was fuming. She told them, “If y’all don’t have your routine down the next time I see y’all, I’m f**king y’all up!” She must have scared the living crap out of them because they pulled it together for the next time.

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Prison Really Was A Home Away From Home For Queensbridge Housing Projects Residents 

In one of the more tragic parts of the film, Jungle gives a brief story and update on the people featured in the album insert’s photos. According to him, when it came time for Nas to shoot the photos for the album, he was in a celebratory mood. He told Jungle to get people to come outside. Jungle reflected on all of the love he and Nas felt that day during the Danny Clinch photo shoot, but became somber when he revealed that almost every single person in those photos was either in prison at the moment or had served some hard prison time at point or another. When the filmmakers let Nas know that tidbit of information, he reacts with a solemn “That’s f**ked up.”

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Nas Wanted A Family Feel On “Life’s A Bitch”

If you ask any producer who worked on “Illmatic” and they’ll tell you Nas knew exactly what he was looking for when it came to beat selection. Many of the beats you hear on “Illmatic” were the first beats each producer played for the legendary rhymer. That was especially the case on the beloved cut “Life’s A Bitch.” Producer L.E.S. says he only played Nas one beat and that beat became the AZ-assisted track. Nas said the beat reminded him of being at home on Saturday mornings with his mother because of the “Yearning For Your Love” sample. That familial feeling caused Nas to get his father Olu Dara on the song for a trumpet solo. Nas told his father to play something that reminded him of the music they used to listen to when Nas was a kid.

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