A QUESTION FOR THE OLD HEADS.....DID ILLMATIC REALLY HAVE AS MUCH OF AN IMPACT AS PEOPLE SAY.....

[mr.africa]

times were different. there was no twitter, internet,etc.... impact was gauged differently.
word of mouth, word on the streets,etc........... and the ny streets were buzzing because of illmatic. the album without a true radio hit still managed to debut no.2 on the billboard top US r and b/hip hop album charts. the album resonated with his peers from around the US as mentioned by some already. it also had some(not big) impact internationally. look at some of the year end lists of the best albums of 1994.
oor magazine in netherlands no.42 album of the year
nme magazine in united kingdom no. 33 album of the year
pop magazine in sweden no.9 album of the year ...............and there are a number more publications that recognised how good the album was.


album had impact when it was released. i'll admit it was initially not as big as some of the popular albums of its time. but it was anticipated, had the streets in a frenzy and lived up to the hype.
anyone saying differently:

 

[Brad Piff]

over here on the west coast nobody even knew illmatic dropped til like 2000 or whenever that smilez & southstar single came out..

 

[mr.africa]

over here on the west coast nobody even knew illmatic dropped til like 2000 or whenever that smilez & southstar single came out..

pac was fukking with it. game said he had a copy!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Brad Piff]

Wow 2 people

PAC idk

Game is one of the biggest liars in rap history he probably didn't hear a nas album til 2001 around the same time he heard 2001

 

[gluvnast]

It truly goes to show how ignorant or how young these kids today are when it comes to hip hop knowledge. If you trying to even remotely compare sales of 20 years back to how it was today or even a decade ago, then you severely are ignorant to real hip hop as a culture. Probably got introduced to hip hop from some fake pop act or current big crossover name of the time and learn about its roots in basic 101 knowledge years later.

Understand this. Hip hop back in the early 90's. If you wasn't MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Marky Mark or any of those fake hip hop acts appealing to a mainstream audience who doesn't have a clue of the hip hop culture, then you wasn't selling. The ONLY true hardcore crossover act of that time was from Death Row that truly crossed over. Not only that, there was a coastal bias going on back then. West Coast n*ggaz only listen to west coast sh*t and East Coast n*ggaz only listen to east coast shyt and the rest of the nation was mostly west coast leaning, therefore most east coast MC's didn't get their due on a commercial level at all, until biggie took the west coast formula with Ready to Die.

Then you didn't have the internet like today. The net was virtually brand new with hardly anybody with it. Outside MTV Raos and Rap City, unless you got a crossover POP rap tune, you will never get those huge commercial success. Back in those days, MTV ain't playing your sh*t unless it was a crossover hit, and hip hop wasn't remotely the dominating music of that time period. So, most people didn't even get to listen to Illmatic until It Was Written in which Nas changed up his style to be more commercially appealing. Most of it was all through word of mouth, and without the internet or any proper POP mainstream marketing, that word can travel for years.

 

[Danie84]

Illmatic came out in 94, and still held in high regard to this day, so its impact is still evident

 

[up in here]

There is a reason why every hip-hop album given "classic" status is compared against illmatic. It's not just a good album

 

[Bugsmoran]

now explain why Nas wasnt in 2 of the biggest Eastcoast HipHop cyphers if illmatic made such a big impact?

Arsenio Hall cypher 1994


Yo Mtv Raps cypher 1995

Lol @ y'all acting like y'all didn't see this post^^^^

So everybody claiming Nas made such a big impact when he dropped why wasn't he in any of them cyphers?

Everybody and they mama in them cyphers.... Where Nas be at?

 

[up in here]

Lol @ y'all acting like y'all didn't see this post^^^^

So everybody claiming Nas made such a big impact when he dropped why wasn't he in any of them cyphers?

Everybody and they mama in them cyphers.... Where Nas be at?

He was in the projects. It's pretty well known that nas didn't really participate in a lot of the industry shyt. He even dropped out of his own tour when the album dropped.

 

[Bugsmoran]

He was in the projects. It's pretty well known that nas didn't really participate in a lot of the industry shyt. He even dropped out of his own tour when the album dropped.

Nas was in the projects because he was a bum

Biggie wasn't there because he had too much on his plate.... Literally. Big was eating good

Big was da hottest Ny rapper at the time... His album had a way bigger impact than illmatic

 

[How Sway?]

It truly goes to show how ignorant or how young these kids today are when it comes to hip hop knowledge. If you trying to even remotely compare sales of 20 years back to how it was today or even a decade ago, then you severely are ignorant to real hip hop as a culture. Probably got introduced to hip hop from some fake pop act or current big crossover name of the time and learn about its roots in basic 101 knowledge years later.

Understand this. Hip hop back in the early 90's. If you wasn't MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Marky Mark or any of those fake hip hop acts appealing to a mainstream audience who doesn't have a clue of the hip hop culture, then you wasn't selling. The ONLY true hardcore crossover act of that time was from Death Row that truly crossed over. Not only that, there was a coastal bias going on back then. West Coast n*ggaz only listen to west coast sh*t and East Coast n*ggaz only listen to east coast shyt and the rest of the nation was mostly west coast leaning, therefore most east coast MC's didn't get their due on a commercial level at all, until biggie took the west coast formula with Ready to Die.

Then you didn't have the internet like today. The net was virtually brand new with hardly anybody with it. Outside MTV Raos and Rap City, unless you got a crossover POP rap tune, you will never get those huge commercial success. Back in those days, MTV ain't playing your sh*t unless it was a crossover hit, and hip hop wasn't remotely the dominating music of that time period. So, most people didn't even get to listen to Illmatic until It Was Written in which Nas changed up his style to be more commercially appealing. Most of it was all through word of mouth, and without the internet or any proper POP mainstream marketing, that word can travel for years.

Thats kind of my point...

 

[up in here]

Nas was in the projects because he was a bum

Biggie wasn't there because he had too much on his plate.... Literally. Big was eating good

Big was da hottest Ny rapper at the time... His album had a way bigger impact than illmatic

Whatever makes you feel better breh

 

[MINT]

illmatic impact ?

 

[daze23]

Public Enemy's "911 is a joke" had a Michael Jackson sample, as did other records

that seems a little obtuse. It Ain't Hard to Tell was obviously the Human Nature melody. 911 sampled the Vincent Price (RIP) laugh

 

[lutha]

Only nikka, downplaying illmatic is some gooflame toy ass nikkaz.


Art Barr

lol..you can call me what you want, doesn't change what it was like then...i'm not one of these youngsters, i'm old enough to know, cause i experienced it...I know it hurts you 'real hip hop heads' to hear that illmatic didn't impact the game like yall wish, hope, and believe it did thanks to all the bullshyt hype that's been placed on the album over the years, but that shyt just gotta hurt...the album was good when it came out, but it was just that: another good album during a time when a lot of good albums were coming out....and like I said: chronic had more of an impact on the game than illmatic....if anything, illmatic should thank chronic for getting those 5 mics it did...cause the only reason chronic didn't get it was cause it wasn't a ny released album, but that's another topic....

on a side note: this is hilarious...this cat doesn't know me from a can of paint, yet instead of making a counter point to what I said, he went with name calling trying to attack me as a person...i tell you, the internet makes people bold....but whatever, I aint here for that, so continue on

edit - the album wasnt the 1st 5 mic receiver...it was 7th..