Nas releases 'N.Y. State of Mind' on 'Illmatic'

Why it matters

There are two facts about "N.Y. State of Mind" that you have to know to understand how the song landed in 1994. The first is the technical fact: DJ Premier built the beat in the studio that day, in front of Nas, using a Joe Chambers piano sample and a hard kick. The second is the narrative fact: Nas was not from the Mafia. He was not a hustler. He was a Queensbridge kid whose father, the jazz musician Olu Dara, was around and supportive. He had been writing his verses by listening to a Marley Marl track and rewinding it. What that means is that the most cinematic, street-specific, hard-eyed verse in 1994 New York rap was written by a kid who had spent his teenage years studying the form like a scholar. "N.Y. State of Mind" is observation, not autobiography in the strictest sense. Other MCs of the era were rapping about their lives. Nas was rapping about his neighborhood. The level of specificity in his observation work made the latter feel as direct as the former. You can hear the difference once you know it. The whole next twenty years of literary rap (Jay-Z, Mos Def, Black Thought, Pusha, Kendrick) was downstream of this observational mode.