Illmatic, being one of the greatest EPs ever, just made one salivate at the prospect of a full-length Nas album. And this was good, but it suffered from the type of over-production and unnecessary guest spots that hip hop is plagued by nowadays. I dug it, but it, and most definitely later Nas offerings, show that whole hunger-as-a-necessity in hip hop, because once somebody is discovered, known, and paid, they tend to be less worth a shit. There's also a certain weirdness with being a hip hop head, even if I'm not that now, but I was then, hardcore. When you "know" of Illmatic and what Nas was doing, and then you work at some shitty newspaper in the composition department and the lady next to you who's forty and has three kids is singing the hook to "If I Ruled The World" and the fat white girl across from her is comedically calling back "imagine that", it kills the beauty of the underlying underground nature of hip hop. And that's some serious expert whiteboy analysis. White people like me love shit until other white people love it, then it gets sullied, which makes us hate white people more, except not ourselves for some reason, which creates conflict inside of us that causes us to pretend Eddie Griffin is funny.
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