It doesn’t seem like it has been 10 years but indeed in 1994 Illmatic came out and changed the game of Hip Hop forever. We now had a blueprint of what an album should be. The album was short and concise no fifty people doing verses and choruses on the album like many do now. Lively street tales with a blues and jazz feeling and a young man’s mind on wax over hot beats from producers like Pete Rock, Premier, Q-Tip, The Large Professor and L.E.S. Ten tracks of fire from a man many compared to the R (not R. Kelly), the legendary Rakim before the album dropped!

Nas has definitely carved his own niche in the game and Columbia in appreciation of the classic and trying to get paid again recently re-released the album, Illmatic, digitally re-mastered with a bonus album with four remixed songs and two previously unreleased songs “On The Real” and “Star Wars”.

The album is a classic so you should already know that songs like “Represent”, “N.Y. State Of Mind” and basically the whole thing are Hip Hop legend.

The reissued album gives you chance to hear Nas’ best verses on songs like “Life’s A Bitch”, “The World Is Yours”, “One Love”, and “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” on upbeat beats done by Rockwilder, Vibesman and Nick Fury These tracks let you know that Nas could come out with these songs now on new beats and still kill it.

On “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” in particular uses Biz Markie’s “Nobody Beats The Biz” and a hard break beat to set the song off. Nas also gives you new verses on these songs not on the album.

“One Love” uses sampled elements from Deniece Williams’s “Waiting On The Hotline” and some sound like a flute to tell his story to his boy in the prison system.

On “The World Is Yours” Nas lays his verses on another piano laced beat while the chorus of fellas sing, “Whose world is this!”

“On The Real” is familiar to all the mix tape Nas fans and is almost 10 years old but was never released. On track Nas spits on numerous things like why he can’t be touched and we he and his people do when on the block. He also adds a new verse with commentary of his success over the years.

“Star Wars” is the masterpiece of the bonus album as Large Professor gives Nas a murderous dark beat with sounds of a space fight you see on TV and Nas talks about everything from his life and place in the rap game to young people needing to stay focused to warning those who come at him to spit the real and not that cliché rhyme.

Nas also talks about the big companies not wanting to give Hip Hop the voice and respect it deserves and tries to tell those in and looking to get into the game change with the messages.

If you put the CD on in a computer you get to see a preview of the Nas Video Anthology Vol. 1 and a behind-the-scenes at Illmatic.

The CD is nice for those who don’t have Illmatic and those who do but want the bonus disk which has the new hot remixes, new or lost verses and the two previously unreleased tracks. This CD is a nice retainer till Nas’ next album, the double LP, Street Disciple comes out.

I’ll give the package 4 globes.

Any comments, suggestions, questions email Clayton at clayton@geoclan.com.

Post your own review on GeoBoards