Born to Use Mics

December 15, 2009
Though not an overwhelming chart success when released in 1994, Nas album Illmatic has long been hailed as a hip-hop masterpiece, whose sales steadily climbed until in 2001 it attained platinum status (i.e., one million-copy U.S. sales). Editors Dyson and Daulatzai corral a team of all-star commentators, including themselves, to assess the albums merits and its place in the larger cultural context. Arriving at the very end of hip-hops Golden Age, Illmatic pointed the way for hip-hops post-gangsta crossover into and alteration of the pop-music mainstream. The essays arent easy reading, but they constitute a vital book for readers eager to understand the history of the genre. As Daulatzai observes, There is something about Illmatic that transcends the categories of hip-hop, though at the bottom line, Illmatic is just a dope album, embodying everything that is hip-hop while mastering what matters most: beats and rhymes. An absolute must for serious pop-music collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)