NAS: Who would have thunk it?

I'm an eighth grade dropout.

Ninth grade?

I left school early.

You know, my mom, I'm sure I worried her a lot, you know?

Me and my bro worried her a lot, you know, early on, not knowin' what we wanted.

But we didn't want to become nothing.

We wanted to be something and, you know, I didn't know what my future would hold.

There was a little, little hope that came in that darkness.

OLU DARA: Along came my son, Nas, you know.

I just felt like a king was born.

(CHEERING) JUNGLE: Every rhyme was like the best s*** I ever heard in my life.

WIZ: Eight, nine, 10-years-old, talking about the devil and God.

Nobody was really rhyming like that back then.

(CHEERING) (SHOUTING) How many people have Illmatic ?

One, two, three!

(CROWD CHEERING) JUNGLE: Illmatic was the new beginning of rap.

AZ: It was like, living a hustler's life, through poetry.

(CHEERING) BOBBITO: That was a genius at work.

1994 classic Illmatic , he was prophetic.

He had the courage to tell the truth about the dark side of black existence in America.

Illmatic is one of those transformative moments in hip-hop.

A hundred years from now, that title is just going to stand out, from one of the strongest pillars in hip-hop.

Period.

What he was able to do lyrically, completely shifted the climate of how the MC was supposed to rhyme.

It was so honest and it's so truthful that it's never gonna not be one of the best albums of all time.

NAS: When I made Illmatic , I was trying to make the perfect album.

It comes from the days of Wild Style.

I was trying to make you experience my life.

I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently.

I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing, and becoming something more real.

I gave you what the streets felt like, what it sounded like, tasted like, smelled like, all in that album.

And I tried to capture it like no one else could.

Going to a concert, I think to myself, "Wow, this is what I do for a living.

"I chose this, "and then it happened?

"And now, this is what I do on the regular?"

You know, being from Queens, that's as good as it gets right there.

Begin.

Uh.

(MUSIC PLAYING) My musical journey ain't start with me.

I come from a long line of musicians and artists.

It's in my blood.

What I am today is an extension of what they were then.

♪ New York state of mind ♪ You can trace my artistic roots all the way to Natchez.

(SONG ENDS) (CHEERING) Natchez, Mississippi.

(BLUES GUITAR STRUMMING) (OLU DARA SINGING) My ancestral name is Olu Dara.

It means, "God is good."

I was born in America, a place called Natchez, Mississippi, which is right on the river, during the heart of segregation, the Klan or whatever like that.

You could see the, the burning of the crosses at all times.

You had musicians all over the place, you know, on my father's side.

He and my godfather, they had a group called the Mellowderes.

They traveled all around America.

Well, the family has been like this.

A lot of musicians, artists, teachers, you know, sharecroppers, farmers, hoes, prostitutes.

But they all had a higher grade of how they dealt with it.

It was never like some low, squaloring stuff.

But it was always, if they were gonna ho, they'd ho at the top of hoedom.

Whatever we did, we always did it on the top and made it dignified.

I did four years in the Navy.

I was discharged in New York City.

That's when I met Nas's mother.

So I stayed a couple of days too long and ran out of money and I got stranded here.

And at the same time, along came Nas and his brother.

It was tough for the mother and me, for the whole family then.

What I started to do was going back and forth to Europe, so I could have some kind of money.

And she moved to Queensbridge, you know?

And I was worried.

I was really worried.

Because I knew it was going to be rough out there for her and the kids, you know.

In the '70s, you had mothers and fathers.

In the '80s, you had a lot of single mothers.

In the '90s, you had people being raised by their grandmothers.

DR. WEST: Historically speaking, you gotta keep in mind the GI Bill was a bill in which persons had access to education, credit, they gained access to houses, so you could live in suburbs away from the city.

So, black folk received very little of the GI Bill money, in terms of housing, only 2.1 percent.

That's why you could create a white middle class with black folk gaining no access to it.

And then they create these housing projects that go all the way up to pack folk in, like sardines.

MAYOR FIORELLO LAGUARDIA: (ON RECORDING) Down with hovels, down with disease, down with crime, down with fire traps.

Let in the sun!

Let in the sky!

A new day is dawning.

A new life!

A new America!

(PEOPLE CLAPPING) MAN: (ON RECORDING) Thank you, Mayor La Guardia.

DR. WEST: Historically, they were built for working class families, no matter what color.

But because the color line is so thick in America, once black folk made their way from the south into the cities and began to, in significant numbers, fill up the projects, you got white flight.

And that white flight resulted in a withdrawal of money and wealth from the city.

You know, I tell you, Queensbridge to me, it looked messed up.

It looked like a buried diamond.

I had a chance to have a childhood for at least a little bit, you know.

And then... You know, you had to...

I felt like I had to become a man early, to deal with my environment.

I saw the difference early on in the type of parents I came from.

Good people, hard workers.

We had a color television, we had VCR.

You know, we had a carpet.

We had nice things in our places, compared to some of our other friends who had nothing, who ate hot dogs for dinner, who had no furniture, you know, who was living bad.

Like, we didn't really lack food.

My mom was a great cook.

Everybody wanted to come to our house.

"Ms. Jones is cooking?

I'm over there."

She had a great spirit.

She didn't talk with curse words.

She didn't talk street stuff.

You understand?

She was not like that.

We needed stuff, she'd say, "I don't want y'all to go out there and do it, "find another way to get it.

I will get you it."

JUNGLE: My father had a library in the crib.

He had, like, a wall unit.

It was a library, he had all kinds of books.

Everything, from the Book of the Dead...

JUNGLE: Egyptian books about King Tut... OLU DARA: Psychology of the modern man.

NAS: Malcolm X .

OLU DARA: Sun Tzu.

JUNGLE: Instant facts about the world.

OLU DARA: History of Chinese Philosophy.

NAS: They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima.

OLU DARA: Aesop's Fables.

NAS: Afrocentricity.

OLU DARA: Adowa the King.

NAS: From Superman To Man by J.A.

Rogers.

OLU DARA: The Bible, proverbs .

The trials and tribulations of ghetto life.

I found that helped them a lot.

NAS: My pop had been all over the world in the Navy, and then traveling through his music.

So he had a lot of stories to tell me and my brother about places outside the block, outside the neighborhood, outside New York, outside America.

So there would be a xylophone made of wood, trumpets, guitars, maracas.

They were toys to me, man.

When Pops would leave, we'd just be banging on those things, you know what I'm saying?

OLU DARA: See, Nas...

I thought Nas was going to be a great trumpeter.

He would play trumpet every day with drummers outside our building.

I took the trumpet away from him.

I said, "You can't play now because "your lip might get, get messed up.

"Wait till you're like seven, eight-years-old, when your lip is more, more mature."

He was very...

He was furious about that.

He loved it.

So, by the time he got to be seven, you know, I offered him the horn again, he said, "No, I'm into something else."

JUNGLE: He used to wake me up in the morning with rhymes every day like, "Yo, how this sound?

How this sound?"

But, since he was waking me up in the morning, I would tell him, "Yo.

"Yeah, I didn't like that word.

"You said this, you should have said..." You know what I mean?

And he used to come back, wake me up again, "Yo, how this sound?

This is better."

But I knew he was the best as soon as I ever heard him rhyme.

NAS: I had a friend, a real friend, William Graham.

We called him Will.

We used to play around and make music when we was young.

Uh, me and Will, we'd make tapes and, and stuff like that and play 'em for our friends.

We looked forward to getting together and making tapes.

OLU DARA: Willie lived right upstairs.

He was like my surrogate son also.

He had another way of looking at the world.

And the combination of the two with their minds was like, boom, like an explosion.

I used to go upstairs, his crib, and he'd be baking brownies and taping videos, so one time he said it to a girl on the phone.

She said, "What you doing?"

He said, "Baking brownies and taping videos."

And he bust out laughing.

You know, I guess to him, it sounded real soft.

(CHUCKLES) So, every day, he'd say to somebody, "What you doin'?

"Baking brownies, taping videos?"

He'd say this to everybody.

WILL: (ON RECORDING) It's all I wanna hear .

NAS: He made you laugh.

He was all about having a good time.

That's how we was.

We was like two peas in a pod, you know?

And, uh, we was working on music all the time.

But back then, it was, like, just playing around.

(RAPPING) (MUSIC PLAYING) Back then the vibe was different, the music was, you know bass, 808s in the music.

And people was having a good time.

The style was like fresh.

It was colorful.

It was rich.

Well, they used to have the jams in the park and one of the DJs was from my block.

DJ Hot Day.

Hot Day was known throughout the neighborhood for bringing out his equipment.

Everybody hear that the jam was getting ready to happen.

You see them carrying the equipment to the park.

And sometimes I tried to help.

It was life, it was greatness.

It was, like, so much potential out there.

It wasn't until later that I started to see the deterioration and, um, see the effects of, of what they started to call crack.

We're fighting the crusade for a drug-free America on many fronts.

NAS: The city was about to look crazy.

It's sad.

And it wasn't just a gangster thing.

Any and everybody made money off crack.

It was survival to the fullest.

REPORTER: (ON RECORDING) The collapse of the inner city economy has created a new way of life, an economy based on drugs.

NAS: People that was older than me were more hip to what was happening.

They were making money off of it, so, you know, it spread everywhere.

And I'm just sitting back, watching.

( NY STATE OF MIND PLAYING) NAS: I wanted to give you that feeling of New York at nighttime.

You know you look at things, like shots goin' off every night.

You're seeing what's happening around you.

Pregnant ladies trying to smoke crack.

MALE REPORTER: (ON RECORDING) It's a $100 billion a year business.

FEMALE REPORTER: (ON RECORDING) Crack-related crime is soaring.

NAS: Dudes is late night waiting to rob you, and you're just maneuvering your way through that.

And then the crazy cops coming through 'cause they had to be crazy running after somebody in that neighborhood at night.

The atmosphere was lit.

( NY STATE OF MIND CONTINUES) OLU DARA: To survive here with a family at that time was hell.

Believe me.

Especially if you didn't have any help.

And we had no help.

NAS: Yeah, my parents had reached, like, a final breaking point, you know, where it was it.

My pop just kneeled down to me and gave me that one-on-one.

I'm sure he said, you know, what he had to say to my brother, too.

When he came to talk to me, he gave me that "You're the man of the house" speech.

"Now, I'm not going to be around now" speech.

One day, they had a crazy fight, and my father never came back.

And I used to look out the window and my moms told me he wasn't never coming back to the house.

She said he can't come in.

If he do knock on the door, and I'm there and she ain't there, don't let him in.

And that s*** just some... That s*** f***** me up in the mind, a little bit.

'Cause I was so young.

My moms never dealt with me as a kid.

She always talked to me as if I was her age, or I was smart enough to know anything that's going on.

So, when she said that s***, you know, I just knew it was real.

I'm like, "F***."

I just kept looking for him out the window, but he never came back, man.

You know, man.

He moved around Harlem, you know, somewhere else.

And I'd visit him there.

My mom never spoke anything bad about my father.

My mom felt that, you know, she had been done wrong.

I guess, you know, she was a hard worker, who took care of all of us, including my father sometimes.

You know, he wasn't always working.

She was the one who provided for all of us.

JUNGLE: My father had a lot of talent.

We got the talent and stuff from him.

I think that's where, you know, the...

The talent came from his side and, you know, the intelligence.

But the smarts... And then my moms was so smart, man.

My moms is dead and my father is alive, and I don't really want my father to really, f******, even know him.

Damn, I love you, Dad.

But, yo, my moms, I wish she was here to be, like, praised as much as he is for Nas's life, especially for Nas.

Anything to do with Nas, yo.

My mother is the one that... You know what I mean?

Without her, we would be no nothing.

We'd have been gone.

NAS: I noticed times when my mom'd be crying, or sad or she just...

Moments where she'd be hugging us when we were little and just talking about how things were going to be all right and all of that.

Those were great times 'cause we had a beautiful home inside that neighborhood.

Our home was right for the most part and, um, we had a lot of love, you know.

So she was just really positive.

And, um, happy, you know.

She laughed, we laughed together, a lot.

Um... She really just wanted the best for me and my brother.

JUNGLE: I used to be going this way, trying to go to school and s***, and see all of that early in the morning.

Somebody get shot and all kinds of s***.

It was less police, so s*** was real.

I had to go to Junior High School 204, that s*** was like Rikers Island, that s*** was like jail.

It was junior high school.

(INDISTINCT TALKING) OLU DARA: What I found out in New York, they were not raised like we were raised in the south.

Nurturing, you know, with your own people raising you.

He had never experienced any, any, no love like that before.

And I went over to enroll them into school, it was almost like enrolling them into hell.

It was shocking to me, I felt very bad.

To see that my father was raised in a nurturing school system, I was raised in a nurturing school system, and here come my kids, I have to have kids in New York City and they into this.

NAS: I did like school in the beginning.

I only remember good teachers in elementary school and junior high school a little bit.

There was Ms. Braconi.

MS. BRACONI: Well, Nas was in a bright class, in the first and second grade.

And I remember we did a project.

The children had to make a face, their face, on a mask-sized form.

I was hanging them up and then I stepped back to look at them and I saw Nasir's face.

And he wasn't happy that day for some reason.

And he had captured himself perfectly.

And I thought, "Wow, "this kid can express his feelings."

NAS: They tried to put me into like a slow class in elementary school and my mom raised hell and got me out of there.

I still had dreams, like...

I wondered what it would be like if I was in art and design, or some other school that, you know, that really would push some of my talents, you know, that I thought I had.

But, um, when you grow up in an environment where the taxpayers are not making a lot of money, then they don't have the funding for schools.

And, when the schools don't have any money, you get a no-money education.

And you wind up getting people who's not motivated and start looking for other ways, faster ways.

I would just stop paying attention, I would just daydream.

And in junior high school, I got kicked out and put into another junior high school, where I really didn't care anymore.

So, by the time it was time for high school, it was like, I mean, grades was terrible and I didn't care.

So, I found an assistant principal and a math teacher and they told me, "Your kids don't belong here, this is not... "This will destroy them, they don't care."

They were old enough then.

They were men to me.

'Cause I felt I was a man at that age, 13, 14, whatever.

I said, "I tell you what you do.

"Go work, make you some money.

This is America.

"Quit school, "if you want to save your own life.

"Develop your craft, or whatever you want to do "and I'll back you."

They smiled, I got calls from my mother, my sisters, everybody.

"How dare you?

How could you do it?"

You know.

I wouldn't have felt right the rest of my life, if I had let them just stay in school, and keep being beat down and the teachers not, not really having any love for the kids and stuff like that.

JUNGLE: Yeah, yeah, he told me if they not teaching me nothing, then don't go, and try and figure out life on my own.

And, and I'm smarter than the teachers, anyway.

And, um.

They was just there to hold us back.

He said the whole school system was just holding black men back, black little boys back.

So, he told us don't... Um, you know, read our own books again, and, you know, teach ourselves what's going on.

And, you know, he knew...

I think he knew that we was going to be entrepreneurs.

So he told us we didn't need school.

My mother didn't agree with that s***, but it worked for us, yo.

You know, my mom's biggest fear was us not doing school.

And at the end of the day, I didn't want to hurt her.

My friends, you know, all of them were in the game.

I didn't want to do that full-time.

I didn't want to do that at all, really.

And I really didn't have to.

I planned to be something, like, really something.

You know, I was just really into music, writing, whatever.

Just anything around arts.

And I just kept telling myself, this can't be my career, this other thing.

It can't.

I had a passion for creating things.

So, that was going to be my out.

(CHEERING) (MUSIC BEATS) ♪ We came here tonight to get started ♪ To cold act ill or get retarded ♪ (BEATBOXING) NAS: Back in the days, Roxanne Shante was getting a name as this big rapper in the neighborhood.

(RAPPING) And she came in my building one time and she heard us in the hallway, trying to rap and Shante said, "Look, "I want y'all to come perform with me."

There was like some Queensbridge park jam that was going to happen, that we heard about and she wanted to bring us on as her crew.

We was like, "Oh wow!"

So we were talking about this every day, working on it.

That's when we started to realize we're not really good.

So she asked us, you know, to spit for her at a different time.

And we tried to rap.

And we started laughing because it wasn't coming out right.

She didn't laugh.

She said, "Listen, "if y'all don't have your routine the next time I see y'all, "I'm f****** both of y'all up."

She's older than us and taller than us and we believed her.

MARLEY MARL: Basically, around '84, I started sampling at the crib in Queensbridge.

Now, the funny thing about me making records, I didn't make records or get into this industry for the money or anything else.

If I was making a beat in the window and it was blasting out and somebody was walking through 12th street, if they didn't stop and do a two-step or something, I would make a new beat.

ANNOUNCER: (ECHOING) Ladies and gentlemen, we got MC Shan and Marley Marl in the house tonight.

They just came from off tour.

They want to tell you a little story about where they come from.

1985, maybe I'm 11, maybe I'm 12, my man comes to get me, "Yo "there is this new song by MC Shan."

Oh, he's like, "Yo, he got a song called The Bridge about the neighborhood."

( THE BRIDGE PLAYING) MARLEY MARL: Which was never meant to be a record, that's crazy.

It was meant to be intermission music for Queensbridge Day.

But the tape went around Queensbridge and hey, became a Queensbridge hit.

And the rest is history.

( THE BRIDGE CONTINUES) When I heard that record, I just stopped everything I was doing and was, like, "Oh s***!"

You automatically knew it was a smash.

MARLEY MARL: The pride was crazy.

You know, we had an anthem.

It was on the radio.

People knew, "Yeah, I'm from Queensbridge."

I couldn't believe they lived in this neighborhood with us.

You know what I'm saying?

So that was amazing to me.

Then, you'd say, "There go Shan.

"There go Marley in his car."

You meet people and tell them where you from, most people never heard of this place.

That song changed everything.

( THE BRIDGE CONTINUES) I go down south and I'm a Shan fan and everything.

I'm a fan of everybody else, but I'm really feeling good about my neighborhood and everything.

I get back, the day I get back, the kids is talking about this South Bronx record.

And I'm like, "What?"

And they's like, "Yo, there's this record.

They dissing Shan and Marley."

I'm like... "All right, well, let me hear it."

( SOUTH BRONX PLAYING) Aw, man, you know, why are they hating?

You know what I mean?

Uh, they trying to be like Shan and Marley.

But it was also raw, that he was going "South Bronx," ♪ South South Bronx, get it South Bronx ♪ Uh, the beat is tough, I can't front.

So Shan put out Kill that Noise.

♪ Rapping any style or categories ♪ Fresh freestyles real live stories ♪ This jam is dedicated to you and your boys ♪ And if you knew what I knew then you'd kill that noise ♪ And then, The Bridge Is Over came.

♪ I say, the bridge is over the bridge is over ♪ Biddy-bye-bye the bridge is over ♪ The bridge is over ♪ Hey, hey ♪ Phew!

It was...

It just...

It just silenced everything.

It was like, "Oh.

"Oh.

They not playing."

( THE BRIDGE IS OVER CONTINUES) (LAUGHING) Oh!

Ho!

Ho!

I was like, "It's real."

MARLEY MARL: It was a battle.

Shan was in that battle.

Shan did his thing.

KRS One did his thing.

The morale went down in Queensbridge until the Nases came out.

JUNGLE: That was our lives, you know, man.

That was not only our lives, it was the whole Queensbridge lives.

Do you know what I mean?

Then we knew... f****** KRS One just said "the Bridge is over" and all that s***.

We was little kids coming up under that s***.

Like, you know, the Bridge ain't over.

We super-ill niggas out here, right?

So, we had to let the world know how ill we was.

When everybody thought in hip hop that the Bridge was over.

Are you f****** crazy?

We was ill. NAS: I already knew I had to prepare to block that hate out or to tear that down.

And my choice was to tear it down.

( REPRESENT PLAYING) ALL: (SINGING) ♪ Represent, represent ♪ NAS: As a kid back then, I felt like every day was one step away from the end.

Me, my man Will and my man Bo.

We went to see Aliens III.

Will never smoked weed, but we thought it was the best thing.

Smoking weed just chilled us out.

Especially, Will.

He can... You never know, he's unpredictable.

Somebody come around and say the wrong thing, he's on their head.

So, I felt like if he smoked, he'd be chill.

We watching the movie and Will said, "Let me hit that."

And he really hit it.

Yo, we were like, "Ah, this is crazy."

And when we got back to the block, me and Bo had went to go get some weed, but Will stayed on the block.

And, I think, he was collecting money 'cause we was throwing a barbecue.

So, everybody that's out there that's hustling, they gotta put in too.

Somebody thought that he was extorting 'em, and started yellin' and smacked him.

He had a big Gucci link chain with a big Mercedes Benz medallion and she popped it.

He was already on one.

We was lit up from the movie, so he just reacted back.

He beat up this girl and s*** and um, she called her baby father and her boyfriend.

Her baby father and her brother.

And the niggas had stepped to me.

I remember I was sitting right here.

NAS: My man ain't never hit no girl in his life.

Matter of fact, if a girl got hit out there, they could come get him and he's stepping to somebody for the girl.

It's just like, in the heat of the moment, certain violations, you know, you react to 'em, and that was a first.

I was sitting right here and the niggas had stepped to me like, "Yo, "Where's ill Will at?

Where's ill Will at?"

And one nigga was like... You know, man, he was gonna do it.

You know, man?

So, I knew they wasn't playing.

I tried to lie to them, but they was serious.

So I told them a super lie, like, "He went that way."

Then, when he came, when Will came, I was like...

He was over there where them kids are at.

And they saw us.

And I was like, "Will, they coming now."

He said, "Nigga, I'm not running from nobody."

And then, when the dude just did the shots... (GUNSHOTS) I looked at him and he looked at me, and his eyes opened up wide and I saw the life leave.

His eyes stayed, stayed in one position and I was like, "Oh s***, he's dead!"

I thought, I was like, "Oh, s***!

"Today is the day that everybody was going to die."

I thought I was going to die, too.

And I felt the bullets plucking through my shirt and my pants.

One right here in the shoulder up there.

It grazed me, took a little meat off.

And then, uh, one came through my leg from the back and came out right there.

Nas came out of this building right here.

He was talking to a girl in this building.

He came out this building right here and walked over there, looked at me on the floor and I said, "Yo, don't tell Mommy."

I swear to God.

I told that nigga, "Don't tell Mommy."

Like I could strength that shot and somehow, spend the night out and come home without my moms knowing I got shot.

When I heard the shots, I came, you know, I knew that the shots were happening in the area where we at.

So, I went downstairs, and I came outside and the first person I saw was my bro.

It was Jungle, he was on the ground.

And his eyes...

He was... His eyes were open.

He was good.

Then I see my man.

And um...

So, he wasn't moving.

I mean, at that point, it was like, "We let somebody take one of us out?"

You know what I mean?

Like, we...

This is it, man.

We might as well all go.

Nothing mattered no more, we... Whatever.

JUNGLE: I ain't blaming nobody, but...

I would have moved.

You know, man, if my son got shot, and I used to tell my mother this s***.

Why didn't we move, yo?

I had to come outside and look at this block again and all that s*** was traumatizing.

That s*** made me into, like, a crazy person.

That s*** made me a shooter and all that s***.

That s*** made me like that.

Give me a cigarette, yo.

You know, at that point, even life itself didn't seem too valuable.

Somebody else's, mine, nobody's seemed valuable at that point.

OLU DARA: Will was a lot of things to Nasir.

He was very creative.

Just like Nas was.

He was very knowledgeable about a lot of things.

They read.

Basically, they thought basically the same.

They were basically brothers in a way.

Yeah.

So I noticed his demeanor did change, he got more...

Uh, maybe cynical about the world or whatever.

He had a little sadness in him.

A little hurt.

I can still see that in him sometimes.

JUNGLE: To me, it made him take life serious.

'Cause he was right on the verge of getting that record deal around that time.

And it was either you sell drugs and be in the hood forever or you do this music s***.

Once Will died, he did music, we didn't even barely see him no more.

'Cause Will was down with what he was trying to do.

They was all together, trying to do the music s***.

After he passed, it was like he was... Was orchestrating things from upstairs.

It was around that time, man, we felt it happening.

We felt like something good was about to happen.

LARGE PROFESSOR: Got introduced to Nas through my homie Joe Fatal, and his boy, Melquan.

They came to me and said, "Yo, we got this guy, "and he wants to make a demo.

"You know, he has his own money and everything.

"And he wants to see if you can make a beat for him."

NAS: So, he was like, "Yeah, I'm up here, working with "Eric B and Rakim and Kool G Rap..." And all these big names and I'm like, "Damn."

You know, this was it.

This was where, you know, the hit hip-hop albums were being made in this studio right here.

WIZ: There's a lot of dudes.

A lot of street dudes.

And me and Nas, being young, 15, 16, and we going inside and um, Large was like, "Yo, go in the booth."

You know, everybody talking.

He just, just, just quietly, like, "Go in the booth."

Nas would go in the booth, he throw in a beat and he start rhyming.

And everybody'd get quiet.

NAS: I was in the Mecca.

I was inside the place that everybody wanted to be.

(LAUGHS) In my mind, this was what I was thinking, right?

"All right, you wanted to do this... "You here now, baby.

"You here.

"This is it.

"Do your thing."

( IT AIN'T HARD TO TELL PLAYING) (NAS RAPPING) "Who's that back there?

Who's that?

"Who's that?

Who's that?

Who's that?

"Man, that boy nice.

"G******.

"The nigga is... Oh, man!

How old are y'all?"

It was just like, "Yo, that's crazy right there.

Like, yo.

"You good, like yo, you good, man."

I'm excellent with that, man, right there, so we was on from there.

Let me formally introduce my boy.

This is my man, the rapper, Nas.

- Nasty Nas.

-(EXCLAIMS INDISTINCTLY) NAS: I started off on my verse from Live at the Barbeque.

Everybody was just excited, you know.

This is something new.

This is going to come up and change the game.

They are not even going to see you coming.

( LIVE AT THE BARBEQUE PLAYING) ♪ It's like that y'all ♪ That y'all ♪ That y'all ♪ That y'all ♪ MC SERCH: It was one of the illest lines anyone ever heard an MC say.

"When I was twelve, I went to hell for snuffing Jesus."

I mean, I must have rewound that, like, 100 times.

This Main Source album is brilliant, but, um, who is that kid?

Oh, it almost felt like, within a week, everybody wanted to know who that guy was.

Nas said the line, "When I was twelve, I went to hell for snuffing Jesus," and I said, like, "Who is this guy?"

You know, it's crazy.

I went on a mission to try to find him.

MC SERCH: I originally met Nas in '92, when Nas was at G Rap's crib.

It wasn't until '93 when I was working on my solo album that I really got to know Nas.

He came to the studio when I was doing Back to the Grill Again.

( BACK TO THE GRILL AGAIN PLAYING) ♪ Back to the grill again ♪ Get up and get down ♪ I told you never stand still ♪ So here's a true or false ♪ Tell me if it's fact or bull ♪ You wanna kill the Klan ♪ Shoot the fans at a tractor pull ♪ Got crazy game ♪ So no one can stop me ♪ But hey, yo, I'm white ♪ I guess my game is hockey ♪ Back to the grill again the grill again ♪ Back to the grill again the grill again ♪ MC Serch ♪ MC SERCH: "Waving automatic guns at nuns."

I never saw those verses as being shock and awe.

They weren't just about the words themselves.

They were about an emotion and a feeling, so you had to use an example.

Like, I am so angry at the system that I have to channel that anguish and that frustration into waving automatic guns at nuns.

( BACK TO THE GRILL CONTINUES) I get a call from my friend, MC Serch.

And Serch says, "I found that kid you're looking for.

"You know, that kid, Nasty Nas from Queensbridge."

And he said, "Not only did I find him, "but I got two demos on him."

I said to my boss, "If you never let me sign anything, "just please let me sign this kid," you know.

And he said, "Okay, all right, all right."

You know, and that's kinda how it happened.

NAS: I always wanted to be on Columbia Records.

They just seemed like the most serious record label to me.

But now I'm invited in.

You know, I mean, I'm like, "It's about time y'all recognize, right?"

And I'm looking at all the history on the walls.

I'm kinda looking around the place like, "You guys are waiting for me."

You know, I'm talking to the walls and the desks and the plaques and the, um, the floors and the people walking, I'm like, this is... "You guys have been setting, setting this up for me."

And I'm here, that's how I felt.

I'm like, "This is home now."

He never told me, "I got the deal."

He never said that s***.

He just came back with the money.

You know what I mean?

Like, "Yo, I got some money."

He didn't tell me how much he had or nothing.

He just was like, "Yo, what you want?

"Go to Macy's and get..." You know what I mean?

He brought me some Guess jeans and s*** like that, like, "Yo, here.

You want some money, I got you."

And all that s***.

I didn't even know what he was doing.

I didn't even know how.

I just figured, "Cool you got this little bit of money.

"That's the most money we ever gonna have.

Ever."

And, you know what I mean?

"This is the end.

"You gonna do some videos and we good.

"We back in the hood.

And that's the shine that we got."

I didn't know that s*** meant the world.

You know what I mean?

I thought that s*** just meant the Bridge.

DJ: (ON RADIO) You know what time it is, y'all hear the Bridge beat.

That's the anthem right here.

BOBBITO: That's where you guys are from, right?

NAS: No Question.

MAN: Queensbridge in the house.

BOBBITO: Yo, repeat what I'm sayin', like, peoples definitely been waiting for the album.

Why don't you let them know what is going on with that.

NAS: (ON RADIO) Yeah, the album getting ready to come out in January.

The name of that is Illmatic.

NAS: You heard Live at The Barbecue, you heard Back to the Grill Again, so now it's album time.

NY State Of Mind, which I knew was going to be the first record on the album.

I'm bringing you through hell and back, I'm bringing you in.

Here it is, this is song number one when you pop in that tape.

( NY STATE OF MIND PLAYING) Word up!

Hey, yo, black this out.

It's time, it's time, baby.

(MC SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY) DJ PREMIER: I said I wanted to do something that's slow.

So I'm already thinking darks and walk-with-me type of joint.

Yo, it gotta make you do this, and that makes you do that.

♪ Straight out the f****** dungeons of rap ♪ Where fake niggas don't make it back ♪ I don't know how to start this ♪ MISS INFO: When I wrote the review for Illmatic in The Source magazine, I didn't know that it was going to change hip-hop.

I only knew that it changed me, with one listen.

KENDRICK LAMAR: Illmatic is the album for the '90s era when I was growing up.

The stories he was telling was something I could relate to.

Illmatic will always be number one.

ERYKAH BADU: Coming from Dallas, Texas, Illmatic was my secret.

It was my weapon.

It was the steel that sharpened my steel, which set the tone for Baduizm and everything else that I would do.

J. COLE: In 1994, I was nine-years-old.

I came up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, so a lot of things didn't make it to me.

He hit us with life lessons and insight on how to maneuver through this world as just young black men in America.

Fab 5 Freddy, I'm in the laboratory with my man right here.

It's big Nas, son.

It's Illmatic.

L.E.S.

: Nas called me, and was like, "Yo, I got one more slot on the record.

"Come to the studio, "bring all your disks, bring all your beats."

I didn't even get a chance to play anything.

The first beat that I pulled up, was Life's a Bitch .

( LIFE'S A BITCH PLAYING) (RAPPING INDISTINCTLY) AZ: I'm from Brooklyn, I'm from East New York.

You know, where I'm from, the homicide rate is like an all-time high.

When I wrote Life's a Bitch, another one of my homies just passed.

That was like the third one.

A lot of brothers was incarcerated.

I shot it at one of my homies, and it was like, "Damn, son.

Like, oh, s***."

I felt it from the heart.

( LIFE'S A BITCH CONTINUES) Q-TIP: The rhyme flow from the MC perspective the nigga put down was crazy.

But when you say "I'm destined to live the dream "for all my peeps who never made it," nestled within all of that street grimy s**# the nigga talking, is hope.

( LIFE'S A BITCH CONTINUES) NAS: Early on my pops told me, you know, "You're going to be the man of the house, I'm out."

My moms told us, you know, "He's still your father, he still loves you."

You know, that story and it was like...

I'm sure I wasn't happy about it.

But, you know, to me, I've always been like, "That's life," you know, "Keep pushing."

♪ Life's a bitch and then you die ♪ That's why we get high ♪ 'Cause you never know when you're gonna go ♪ NAS: The track just had a jazzy feel to it.

I just felt like I could hear my pop on it.

I just asked him to play something that reminded him of when me and my brother was kids in the neighborhood.

(INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING) That record is the mind-set of most people today still.

It's still me.

It's still who I am, as far as, when you listen to those words, it's sort of like philosophy in a way, you know.

It's like... You know, it's talking about life.

( THE WORLD IS YOURS PLAYING) That 19-year-old was the beginnings of me.

You know, the beginnings of who I am today.

If it wasn't for me in that, in that mind-set then, you know, people wouldn't know, people wouldn't be with me today.

♪ I sip the Dom P ♪ Watching Gandhi till I'm charged ♪ Writing in my book of rhymes ♪ All my words pass the margins ♪ Behold the mic, I'm throbbing ♪ Mechanical movement ♪ Understandable smooth s*** ♪ That murderers move with ♪ The thief's theme ♪ Play me at night they won't act right ♪ The fiend of hip-hop The vibe of that song was straight Tony Montana, Scarface .

"The world is yours," that's what it said on the blimp.

That was it.

That, that was serious in the movie when he saw that.

It was like a sign.

PETE ROCK: I saw this jazz album, Ahmad Jamal and... You know, just threw it on, one day as I was vacuuming my room and I heard the loop go by.

That's when I started making the drums.

I was like, "Hmm, let me put something in there that's kinda like "not just your regular boom bap, but "something else, like..." (BEATBOXING) (MUSIC BEATS) That was the first beat.

When he heard it, I saw him just freeze, you know what I'm saying?

And just... You know, just start closing his eyes and getting an idea.

He came up with the idea of me singing the hook and I wasn't, I wasn't with it.

He was like, "Nah, I want you to sing it, man."

Then he started singing it the way he wanted me to do it.

And I did it, you know what I'm saying?

(SINGING) ♪ Who's world is this?

♪ ( THE WORLD IS YOURS PLAYING) ♪ Who's world is this?

♪ I said the world is yours the world is yours ♪ NAS: "Thinking of the word best describing my life "to name my daughter, "my strength, my son, the star, "will be my resurrection."

I had no idea I would have kids in that order, the way I wrote that rhyme and what their sexes would be.

It's just, I spoke that on my first album and that's how life turned out.

That is... That is chilling.

All right, peace.

Peace.

I was born right here.

Snacky boy.

Hey!

What up?

Oh, s***!

Oh, s***, what up, man?

Good, baby.

What up, man?

Karate K. Look good, baby.

What's up with you?

This is the dude here that used to snap on me every day.

If I came outside and my sneakers was f***** up, he would send me back upstairs.

This dude was the best ever.

The best.

What up baby?

I'm a huge fan.

Since Illmatic.

You already know.

Yo, I can bring cameras, y'all all right with that?

Just want to check with y'all to make sure.

Peace.

How're you?

What up, baby?

What up?

Nigga got big as hell.

Yeah, I'm home.

I ain't little Messiah no more.

You big Messiah, now.

Welcome home, my nigga.

Yeah.

What's goin' on?

Hey, y'all.

Hey, peace.

What up?

I love you, Nas.

I love you too, baby.

I never saw that I'd be having this day, to look back and think about where I come from, and made it to where I'm at.

This was a story that needed to be told.

It was already told by MC Shan and Marley Marl, Craig G, Shante, the Juice Crew.

You know what I'm sayin'?

It was already told... Tragedy.

Um, it was already told.

So, I was just an extension of that.

You know, I'm sayin', they paved this way.

They...

They made this happen.

What's up, little man?

Come here, give me five.

How you doin'?

What's your name?

Noah.

What's your name?

Noah.

Noah.

Nice to meet you, Noah.

Stay good, man.

What's your middle name?

Nasir.

Nasir?

Give me five, man!

Yo, look.

Everybody with that name are kings.

So we are kings, okay?

Just know that for the rest of your life.

Don't ever think anything else.

Just know that you are a king, all right?

My man.

Be good.

What's up man?

Give me five, give me five.

OLU DARA: I remember being in Europe and I hadn't seen my boys for a long time.

So I went out to Queensbridge to look for them.

A man with a camera, a guy I knew, said "Hey, there are your boys."

And they come running over.

They hugged me and kissed me and s*** and then they posed for the photograph.

(SNIFFS) I just never forget how they looked.

'Cause they had, they had changed.

I had been gone so long.

But, you can just tell, they were...

They had been released from their mother's arms.

And they were just out there.

Just having fun.

You know?

When I first saw that Illmatic cover, I knew exactly where that photograph came from.

From the looks of the photograph, you can just tell that's the way his mind just opened up.

To me, his mind was saying, "Wow, "what a world!

"What a world."

NAS: So, you'd have this your background for Illmatic .

Danny Clinch, the photographer, when he showed us this picture, it just felt like, you get a chance to see the neighborhood in a larger way.

That day was a big day for me because we had made it, we were rolling out with an album.

We were doing a photo shoot for the album.

There was no stylist, there was no budget for anything except a cameraman.

To get to that point is the biggest day in your life, so we were celebrating.

JUNGLE: Nas said, "Come outside, yo, "a camera crew is outside."

Everybody knew Nas was a rapper, you know, he had a song out.

So, you know, people came outside.

There's a lot of people around that want to kill each other, that just got together that day, just, um, for the pictures and s***.

That was a crazy day in the hood.

Everybody got their turn in Queensbridge, for somethin' to happen.

Some of them people are going to catch murders, and some of them people are going to get beat up.

Some of them people are going to go to jail, but all them people wanna have a story.

Everything will happen to each individual in that picture, one by one.

He's doing 15 years.

He's fighting a murder.

He's doing life in prison.

He just got locked up, no bail.

My man just, um...

He just did some... A s*** load of time in f****** North Carolina and Briggs crazy ass life.

He do a bunch of f*****' time in and out of jail.

And this s*** is real, it's the projects.

That's f***** up.

It's so f***** up to just see what happened.

You know what I'm sayin'?

Like, it makes me really realize, if it wasn't for music, you'd have told a story about that kid, too, on the bench.

if it wasn't for music, you would have went along that line, telling that story or maybe I wouldn't even have been in that picture.

That's not what I wanted to see happen to nobody in that picture.

You know, I wanted...

I wanted the best for my friends.

You know what I'm saying?

So... Yeah.

It's crazy.

I still have dreams about bein' here.

I still have dreams like I'm here.

I don't know what it means.

I feel like every hood is haunted by the brothers that walked through there.

You know, the essence of them is still here.

It helped make this place what it is.

They kinda like govern it, spiritually, you know what I mean?

So, you always remember the homies.

You always remember the ones that meant a lot, that died for even this neighborhood.

That died for us to be here.

I feel like a voice for those ones that passed on, you know what I mean?

Because, I was here.

This was me, this is what it was about for me, you know what I'm sayin'?

This was like...

This was life.

(CROWD CHEERING) (NAS SHOUTING) DJ PREMIER: This song right here, goes out to everybody you love!

Especially all the motherf****** on lockdown.

Hold your head up.

( ONE LOVE PLAYING) ♪ Hold your head up, nigga hold your head ♪ Yo, to the L, to the O ♪ To the V, to the E ♪ To all my niggas locked down in Queensbridge ♪ To all my niggas locked down in New York City ♪ To all my niggas locked down in Queensbridge ♪ To all my niggas locked down in New York City ♪ Say love ♪ Q-TIP: Large Professor hit me, told me, "Yo, "you need to link up with Nas, I know you got it."

It was Large and Akinyele and Nas that came out.

We had a little set up in Phife's basement.

Nas was like, "I just need that s*** you do."

You know I'm saying, like, that mystic s***.

I played him what was to become One Love.

NAS: I found myself getting letters from friends who were locked up all the time and, you know, me saying what's going on in the free world and him telling me how he's maintaining and asking me questions and that's going back and forth, you know.

Um, just keeping this brother's head up.

I never heard a record where somebody's writing letters to people.

If I did, it was like a love song, or it was never from a street perspective.

So, One Love was about keeping people's head up in locked up situations.

( ONE LOVE PLAYING) Q-TIP: "Heard he looks like ya.

"Why don't your lady write ya?"

That right there, if you examine those two bars and, and just look at what happens when we get incarcerated.

You know, you're dealing with an African-Ameri... A young African-American disease almost, is incarcerating black men.

Not only do you incarcerate them in a physical sense, but you incarcerate, you emasculate them, you incarcerate their manhood, their identity, their spirit.

( ONE LOVE CONTINUES) There's a thing that we say in the hood.

"Yo, she's a good bitch, she gonna bid with you, "if you get locked.

"She's not f****** around.

"She's galvanizing all your people, making sure you get visits.

"She's holding you down."

But when you are black and in America and in the hood, with no income and hard to find a job and crime all around you, there's a cloud of dysfunction that just hovers over that young sister.

So just in that line, "I heard he looks like you ya.

Why don't your lady write ya?"

shows how the prison system, also destroys you know, union and love and family, you know what I'm saying?

And destroys promise and hope.

Not only for the person who is incarcerated, but those people who are attached to them on the outside.

( ONE LOVE CONTINUES) (MUSIC FADES) Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

STUDENT MODERATOR: The Hiphop Archive was established at Harvard University to support art, culture and knowledge of hip-hop, and its followers.

The Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship is designed to provide students and artists with the opportunity to demonstrate that education is real power.

Can we all just welcome Professor Morgan, Mr. Nasir Jones and Professor Skip Gates.

NAS: Everybody I grew up with, no one finished college, no one owns a store, owns a bank.

Dudes is doing life.

You know, dudes are dead.

Dudes are, are, you know, in the streets, or don't know where they're at, you know, so an album comes out during that period, right?

Could you imagine being approached by Harvard at that point?

It's like, if it's going to be the Nasir Jones Fellowship, it's gotta be someone who's been consistently working and building.

You want to make a contribution to the world.

I said, "Our friends be "in the projects or jail "never Harvard or Yale," years ago.

And now... And here we are.

DR. HENRY LOUIS GATES: So that they realize this is an art form, this is a contribution to world civilization.

Being studied at a university like Harvard.

Being preserved in a hip-hop archive.

Having fellowships created for the geniuses of the genre, like Nas Jones.

NAS: I represent my friends that didn't make it.

I represent all the guys 'cause they helped me get here.

Just their conversations, just us riding out together as young teenagers.

The things they told me, the things that I told them.

And we mixed it all up.

The things we survived, and the things that we lost.

I represent all my guys, you know I'm saying, that didn't make it here with me.

You know I'm saying, that were there with me from the beginning.

I didn't trust anything.

I didn't trust anything outside the world that I lived in.

I didn't care about politics, I didn't care about America that much.

I didn't care that much 'cause I didn't believe that it believed in me.

So today, you know, thank God I'm here.

I've made it through the storm and this is an amazing honor, for myself and if...

If I may say so, to hip-hop, too.

Aw, man.

Give it up, give it up.

(CLAPPING) NAS: A kid dropped out of school, a kid from the projects in New York, you know I'm saying, gets... You know, gets recognized.

This ain't about just music.

I wanted to do Illmatic to leave my voice, my opinions, my philosophies, my ideas in music form, in rap form, as something that was proof that I was here.

( THE WORLD IS YOURS PLAYING) ♪ It's yours, yours, yours ♪ Whose world is this?

♪ The world is yours The world is yours ♪ It's mine, it's mine it's mine ♪ Whose world is this?

♪ It's yours ♪ It's mine, it's mine it's mine ♪ Whose world is this?

♪ The world is yours the world is yours ♪ It's mine, it's mine it's mine ♪ I sip the Dom P ♪ Watching Gandhi till I'm charged ♪ Writing in my book of rhymes ♪ All my words pass the margins ♪ To hold the mic I'm throbbing ♪ Mechanical movement ♪ Understandable smooth s*** ♪ That murderers move with ♪ The thief's theme ♪ (CONTINUES SINGING THE WORLD IS YOURS )