Friday, April 19, 2024, marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Nas’ full-length studio debut, Illmatic. Arguably the most critically acclaimed rap album in the history of the genre, Illmatic is a boom-bap behemoth. Sitting alongside ’90s rite-of-passage records such as Nirvana’s Nevermind, Green Day’s Dookie, and Radiohead’s OK Computer, its reputation as a flawless, every-second-perfected collection has only grown with age.

Now that Illmatic is having its pearl anniversary, there’s still so much more to say. Its legacy continues to evolve in every corner of the hip-hop map, including Minnesota. This is how a ’90s teenager in Queensbridge managed to impact the world. Imagine that.

One overlooked aspect of Illmatic’s release is the contrast of how it arrived to listeners back in 1994. Despite being 10 years after RUN-D.M.C.’s debut album, the genre and culture were young enough to still have some dismissing hip-hop as a controversial fad. Corporate investments into rap releases weren’t given quite the same attention as other genres. While independent hip-hop labels thrived off being hyper-regional and the larger ones like Def Jam, Priority, and Death Row stuck to a trusted aesthetic that listeners grew with along the way – the major-label rap rosters were often talented, but less identifiably cohesive.

In 1994, record label Polygram purchased Sony’s 50% stake in Def Jam Records, taking their artists with them. The remaining rap contemporaries on Sony’s label Columbia were dance favorites Ini Kamoze and C+C Music Factory, cult favorite — and future MF DOOM collaborator — Kurious, emerging youngster Da Brat, and the Ruffhouse Records imprint that boasted established stars in Cypress Hill, Kris Kross, Schoolly D, and Tim Dog as well as a newly-signed still-figuring-it-out Fugees. The hodgepodge of styles and sub-genres here only had the common denominator that they were coming out on a major label with major-label resources and distribution.

An unsigned teenage Nas stole the show by delivering a career-making debut verse on rap group Main Source’s “Live at the Barbecue” in 1991. His first official release (then going by Nasty Nas) was the single “Halftime” off the soundtrack to the 1992 Michael Rapaport hip-hop drama Zebrahead. While the soundtrack and single were part of the Ruffhouse imprint, Illmatic’s release two years later came out on Columbia proper – an important distinction. Its all-star list of producers includes Gang Starr’s DJ Premier, Main Source’s Large Professor, Pete Rock, and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest.

The production reflected a state-of-the-art, authentic hip-hop sound paired with Nas’ own uncompromised flow and lyrics. This album was coming through the same channels as Mariah Carey, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Alice in Chains, Dolly Parton, and Toad the Wet Sprocket. Columbia was as major as it got and there were no signs of meddling. (Some have erroneously claimed the sampling of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” on “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” was a label call, but that sample was already present on the song’s pre-Sony demo version in 1991 titled “Nas Will Prevail.”)

No rap album, especially a debut, had ever come through the major label pipeline like this. For many it was their first-ever exposure to such a raw hip-hop record. Commercially, it had an underwhelming debut, but the critical acclaim and word-of-mouth signaled a paradigm shift. Hip-hop publication The Source awarded Illmatic its highest possible rating of Five Mics (out of five). Beastie Boys’ rapper Adam “MCA” Yauch frequently praised Illmatic in interviews. (Beastie biographers often state that all MCA would do around the release of Ill Communication was “snowboard and listen to Illmatic.”)

Even 1,300 miles from Nas’ Queensbridge origins, listeners found the hype justified in Minnesota. Twin Cities hip-hop luminary and current Minnesota state representative Maria Isa recalls the album being “life-changing,” having first heard it while in elementary school when her older brother played it. The child of New York “Nuyorican” parents, Isa credits Illmatic for helping her grasp the world around her better. “Now that I’m a grown woman in hip-hop and have birthed children in hip-hop, I think of how influential his skills are,” she says. “It made me understand a lot about my parents, my cousins, systemic injustice, and the influence of this culture that has now evolved into survival — not just in New York, but globally.”

In particular, Isa cites the album’s first song “New York State of Mind” as being particularly powerful. “He painted a picture of New York through that song,” she says. “I flash back to being a kid in New York in the early ’90s and riding a train with my cousins. It was Queensbridge. It was New York. Nas really took the Statue of Liberty’s torch in becoming such a prophet…  Even folks who'd never been to New York when I was growing up felt like they had been to New York because of this album.”

Isa continues to feel the album’s influence 30 years on, especially on “Represent.” “[That song] was the influence of being proud, it didn’t matter where you were but what you were reppin’,” she says. “I take this song into each day, even more now as a state representative, as a theme song. It's just perfection. His lyricism, his delivery, his textures through rhythm and dynamics. His voice. When you have such a good platter of so many different ingredients delivered by everyone who knows their role, it’s like The Bear of hip-hop.”

The timelessness of Nas’ Illmatic is further emphasized each time the album hits another anniversary. The dialogue around the release of Nas’ third album, I Am…, in 1999 was as much about the half-decade mark of his debut as it was about the new record. Illmatic’s 10th anniversary in 2004 featured a re-release with a second disc composed of early-aughts producers doing brand new remixes of the classic tracks. The 20th anniversary in 2014 saw a making-of documentary premiering at Tribeca, a deluxe bells-and-whistles new release packed with rare 1994 extras, and even Nas on touring performing the album in its entirety.

Minnesota hip-hop fans experienced the live Illmatic experience to Minnesota at the 2014 Soundset Festival. Among those in attendance was Minnesota hip-hop artist and influential community curator Christopher Michael Jensen, whose first experience with Illmatic came during his formative years in the early aughts.

“I was probably 15 or 16 years old… trying to get my hands on as much classic hip-hop as possible,” he recalls. Based upon a recommendation from his older brother, he found a used copy at the old Uptown Cheapo Records location. “The kinds of rhyme styles I gravitated to most were polysyllabic and complicated cadences — I aspired to rap with that type of precision and skill level. Illmatic is a master class in this kind of highly technical writing. Also, from a production standpoint, you had some of the greatest producers ever putting together these very moody, gritty beats with raw samples that really epitomized everything about boom bap that I love. The entire presentation is literally as pure as hip-hop gets from hip-hop’s golden age.”