A burgeoning Nasir Jones—in 1994—solemnly comprehended, a social macrocosm that is only tolerant of Black excellence, defying that social order would be deleterious to the pursuit of a prolific (not mundane) vocation.
The release of “Illmatic” in the canon of hip hop, muscled a denomination of America to embrace hip hop with scholastic solemnity.
Nas’ dexterity and dense erudite rhymes for a 17-year-old, bewildered the ethnic majority, but not Black America: The innate avant-garde connoisseurs in the Black milieu knowably discerned, excellence, is the utmost existential identity, which is not discriminatory toward age, and, is neither a virtue for sacrifice at the slaughterhouse.
The throughline of Nas’ existential aesthetic was evident in rhyme schemes where he parlayed: “My intellect prevails from a hanging cross with nails…reinforc[ing] the frail, with lyrics that’s real”—a profound analogy, accentuating the paramount importance of intrepid prophetic critique, in the midst of a social ecosystem that lynches vanguards of justice.
Hip hop has inequitably been assaulted and denigrated for its perceived crass commercialism and crude reportage of the state of America; this lapse in orientation fails to discern the social pathologies America vehemently laments about—in correlation to hip hop—is forged by its own historical deeds of racial apartheid, which, by logical deduction, has become the inevitable sine qua non, of an MC’s scaffold of rhymes, in their dire exposition of the warfare against the marginalized.
The venture capitalists are the custodians of co-opting hip hop, and perverting a denizen of the social macrocosm, from discerning the dichotomy of a hip hop culture of perseverance and a hip hop industry of gross profitization, that commodifies black lives.
“Illmatic” is a heralded piece of art, and Nas instructively impelled solemn minds to cogitate on the profundity of the maximization of an existential telos.
Nas’ evergreen sentiment, was for the dominant society to confront its transgressions of subconscious and unconscious prejudices, which have concocted a dystopia for the minoritized and the excluded.
It is unfathomable to discern that 30 years have passed since “Illmatic” disrupted the airwaves. In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of “Illmatic,” my playlist this week will honor the ingenious wordsmith from Queensbridge.
