Classics

Nas – Illmatic [Hip-Hop]

Release date 19^th April 1994

Welcome to Queensbridge, 1994. The largest public housing development in New York is home to crack dealers, gang war, gun crime, and misspent youth.

It is also home to rapper Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones, AKA Nas, who at the tender age of 20 presented the world with one of the best  hip-hop albums of all time, and along with other New York rappers provided hip-hop with a whole new sonic blueprint, which we now know as Boom Bap.

Illmatic is a 40 minute long socially conscious, lyrical assault on the experiences Nas faced growing up in Queensbridge; hustling to survive, knife fights, shoot-outs, smoking far too much weed, running from cops, and the death of his best friend and DJ, Willie "Ill Will" Graham.

Kicking off with the familiar sounds of trains on the track, the scene is set immediately and

without pretention; a grubby, graffiti covered train rumbles slowly along the tracks towards 21^st street, Queensbridge.

“Stop fucking around and be a man! There ain’t nothing out here for you”

“Oh yes there is. This.”

Bass and horns quietly play as some young guys drink Hennessey “straight up with no chaser” and smoke Phillies before introducing the first proper track, New York State of Mind.

From the moment that infamous piano motif starts looping up until the final seconds of the album, Nas’s flow, lyricism and rhyme patterns are absolutely flawless. He simply doesn't let up; spitting verse after verse of raw, uninhibited street poetry over hard drum beats, jazz samples, and catchy bass hooks. When it came to producing Illmatic, I don’t think Nas could have been any luckier than he was. After finally getting signed to Columbia, the 20 year old prodigy was blessed with beats from DJ Premier, Large Professor, L.E.S, Pete Rock, and Q-Tip; the combination of these producers alongside Nas’s rapping ability created an album which is absolutely sublime from beginning to end.

It's relentless.

Remember that in 1994, Hip-hop was still relatively young, and the mainstream’s interpretation of the genre was dominated by West Coast gangster rap, and wack-ass bitches like Vanilla Ice. The East Coast had seen some successes, but it wasn't until 1993-1994 when Wu-Tang Clan, Notorious BIG, and Nas restored the scene to levels of international acclaim. Illmatic however, remains my favourite album of the period; avoiding the over-the-top bragging from Ready to Die, and the gimmicky “kung-fu” themes from Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Illmatic is much more stripped back and honest than its contemporaries.

The thing I love most about this album is Nas’s sheer lyrical ability; I've picked out a few choice lines which demonstrate his flow and internal rhyme skills best:

The World is Yours:

“I trip, we box up crazy bitches, aimin' guns in all my baby pictures

Beef with housing police, release scriptures that's maybe Hitler's

Yet I'm the mild, money-gettin' style, rollin' foul

The versatile, honey-sticking wild golden child

Dwelling in the Rotten Apple, you get tackled

Or caught by the devil's lasso, shit is a hassle”

NY State of Mind:

“I know this crackhead who said she's got to smoke nice rock

And if it's good, she'll bring you customers in measuring pots

But yo, you gotta slide on a vacation, inside information

Keeps large niggas erasin' and their wives basin'

It drops deep as it does in my breath

I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death

Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined

I think of crime when I'm in a New York state of mind”

It ain’t hard to tell:

“The Buddha monk's in your trunk, turn the bass up

Not stories by Aesop, place your loot up, parties I shoot up

Nas, I analyse, drop a jewel, inhale from the L

School a fool well, you feel it like Braille, it ain't hard to tell”

Honestly I could have just posted the lyrics from the entire album; nearly every line on Illmatic is filled with vivid imagery of a boy trapped in a decaying network of crime-filled tower blocks, delivered with bone chilling sincerity and skill

I also love the album art here, drawing influence from Hanger Howard Trio's 1974 album A Child Is Born, a young Nas is pictured blending in with the tower blocks of Queensbridge, and adds to the image of a young boy immersed in the slums of the inner city.

There’s not much else to say about Illmatic, except that if you haven’t heard this album you've been missing out on one of the most genre defining records in music history.

Like all classics. This album gets a [10/10]

You can buy the 20th Anniversary [XX] Edition of Illmatic right now! With remixes and unreleased tracks! But please, use your local record store.

The Beatles – Revolver [Psychedelic Rock]

Release date 8^th August 1966

This is “The Sixties” defined in one single pop album. The seventh studio album from the Fab Four is a 35 minute long album that took over 300 hours of studio time to make, which at the time was completely ridiculous.

After a falling out with EMI, George Martin gave them the finger, formed his own company, and took the band to the infamous Abbey Road Studios to give them as much time as they needed to record Revolver. The band and its producer now had ample time to learn new recording techniques, perfect their songs, and explore new instruments.

The result would permanently alter the landscape of popular music.

By abandoning long and exhausting tours, and becoming a full-time studio band, the Beatles became the ultimate musical perfectionists. The band and George Martin were fully at the helm of this record; with no interruptions from men in suits, they entered the studio ready to throw every idea and influence into one big melting pot and see what came out. Taking their softer folk sound they had mastered on Rubber Soul, The Beatles added sitars, tanpuras, tape loops, strange effects and acid-tinged lyrics to create what many argue to be the very first Psychedelic Rock album.

Lennon’s Tomorrow Never Knows is the last track on here, but it was the first to be recorded, it’s also the defining track of Revolver. Lennon’s voice is recorded through a Leslie Speaker (usually reserved for Hammond Organs), Harrison’s guitar goes through a flange effect (one of the first times this effect was used), Ringo’s drums reverberate and swirl around backed up by bizarre tape loops as the iconic words sound out:

“Turn off your mind relax and float downstream, it is not dying…”

The influence of traditional Indian music, combined with their new found interests in Eastern Culture, meditation, and LSD, had introduced the Beatles to a hazy world of philosophical musings and altered states of consciousness. This is constantly reflected on both lyrically and musically throughout this album on tracks such as I’m Only Sleeping, Love You To, She Said She Said, I Want to Tell You, and Got to Get You into My Life. Even the more straightforward tracks on here, such as McCartney’s baroque pop ballad For No One, showcased excellent song writing and compositional ability, as well as introducing new sounds and concepts to the world of pop music.

Okay, so there is a low point on this album, and I know that you already know what it is.

Yellow Submarine

The only Ringo composition on here, it’s no surprise that it’s the weak spot. I have nothing against Ringo, except when he writes songs. I must say, however, that I did absolutely adore this cartoony little number when I first heard it 20 years ago (when I was four years old) and it is still a much loved song (ironically or otherwise) across the planet. You can probably still hear school children singing renditions of this during morning assemblies, likely backed by a smiling barefooted teacher on a cheap acoustic guitar.

It was also the subject of much speculation as to its “true meaning”. Although this was written for kids as a bit of fun, one American poet by the name of Amiri Baraka interpreted the song as a description of white society's isolation from the real world. A music critic of the time even believed the song was a protest against the Vietnam War.

No really, see for yourself.

But this is the reason I love this album so much; even my least favourite track on here is at least funny and damn interesting. If you’ve been living under a rock since 1966 and haven’t heard this album yet, find a copy, turn it on, tune in, and drop out.

Like all classics. This album gets a [10/10]

Blur - Parklife [Britpop]

Release date 25th April 1994

Love it, hate it, Britpop's infamy cannot be overstated. What started as a desire to push away from the cultural influence of American music in favour of a more "British" sound created some of the best and worst records of the decade, and a controversy that still has fans and haters alike close to fisticuffs to this day.

(Just look at some of the comments under this article.)

Parklife, released exactly twenty years ago, is a definitive album of the period and like many other Britpop albums is the result of an intentional formula. Take some blatant influences from 60's pop bands like The Kinks, and The Beatles, slap a few modern ideas and sounds on it, sing about TV, drugs, football and girls and there it is - Britpop.

The genre gets a lot of hate as a result, especially from the hipsters of the period who proclaim it to be too shallow, formulaic, and "mainstream" to be "good music". 

But those people are wrong and this album is why.

Yes, there are songs about TV and girls on here. Yes, there are songs that use derivative chord progressions in order to sound as appealing as possible. Yes, there are blatant rip-offs of ideas that The Beatles got bored of 50 years ago. And that's what makes this album, and many others from this era, so much fun.

It's not as if this album was put together thoughtlessly either. The first track, Girls and Boys, as we all know is about a lad's week away in Greece trying to get drunk and pull. Despite a pretty obvious song topic, the delivery from Damon Albarn is consistently sarcastic, leaving the interpretation open just enough to make the subject matter interesting. Albarn's teenage snarls are set against a bubbly backdrop of funky basslines, scratchy guitars and laser sounds; creating some great vivid imagery of a dirty, but fun, foreign nightclub full of intoxicated young people. For a song that's so dumb, it's very clever.

It's cheeky.

The third track, End of a century, is a Sgt. Pepper's tinged tale of a couple in love rotting away in a messy room in front of the TV. It's relentlessly bitter-sweet in both it's lyrics and chord progression, and the subject matter is everyday, obvious, but utterly relatable.

The title track is Blur's best known song ever.  Phil Daniels at his most cockney talking about being "rudely awoken by the dustman" is forever burned into the skull of anyone who ever turned on a radio; whether they like it or not. Although bereft of any lyrical depth whatsoever, anyone who denies it's staying power as a jangly, catchy pop single should probably talk to the men in white coats.

Bank Holiday show's off the band's more punky sound, driven by some loud riffing from guitarist Graham Coxon. This is essentially a big moan about the banality of the average bloke's bank holiday of burnt barbecue, cheap lager and relatives before "it's back to work, again."

The everyday tales told on Parklife are so great because they are so normal. Whether it's a couple drunkenly clinging on to a dodgy relationship on To the End, or a ofde to shipping forecasts on This is a Low, Blur are able to take the dullest aspects of life in England and make them fun.

It's not as if the music on here is nothing but recycled ideas from the 60's either. There's a lot of them, that's a-given, but Blur also show off their creativity at points to make this album interesting. Tracks like Far Out, and London Loves provide some interesting foreshadowing for what would become the signature "Damon Albarn sound" which would appear on future projects like Gorillaz. 

There is a little filler on here, like the obvious Sgt. Pepper's instrumental rip-off The Debt Collector and the pretty but shallow Badhead, but these are by no means bad songs, and do help provide a pleasing backdrop for the more stand out tracks. If you're looking for fun, catchy, unashamedly 60's pop with a few bells and whistles thrown in, you really can't go wrong with Parklife.

Like all classics. This album gets a [10/10]