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

[Art Barr]

This. Even worse, RD was on an independent label and independent distributor vs. Illmatic that was on Columbia with Sony Urban- The GOAT music distributor and marketing team with extremely deep pockets. Anyway, its still a good album but overrating it is Sohh/ Coli's favourite pastime. I suppose it gets all the fake stans useless brownie points. Personally, Nas is super nice but i have never met anyone who is into Nas as people on this forum: They might occasionally buy his albums, but are they as enamored as the soldiers on here? Nope.

you really do not have a grasp of administration or even the capital involved to actually compare.
nas on Columbia in 1994.
incomparison to rocafella/priority in 1996.

priority was just coming off one of the greatest gangsta rap runs sales wise.
where they made money off of non-culturally endorsed based rap, at the top of the entire industry.
incomparison to Columbia,...
who really was not ruffhouse.
plus, on top of rocafella who also, had their actual own liquid capital to do way more.
on top of a much larger pool of movie money.
incomparison to nas's little zebrahead money,....

you trying to compare eddie murphy blockbuster sequel movie money, combined with legit drug dealer money.
to lowly mc serch in a small office on Columbia,..that is not even ruffhouse, and the most money they got for promo may have been zebra head.
did I mention,...the little money that zebra head had in promo.
illmatic really never got to follow up on,..
when it came to pr, permeation, and promo/marketing.
all because illmatic was delayed and did not come out anywhere near when zebrahead was slated to drop.
of which illmatic was one of the most significantly delayed debut albums behind big L, on that distributor.
I hope you do know that big L.
would be more on a popular level, if not for the longest delay in rap history on a sony distributed label.
also,..illmatic on top of all this fukkery.
illmatic also suffered from administrative fukkery.
all on top of a limited print run for the more than nine month delayed second single, it ain't hard to tell.
which, also was split between two different printings.
where the remix to it ain't hard to tell.
was a completely separate and even small limited print run, as well.

there is no way you are going to raise this issue.
when, you really have no full grasp of the timelines administratively, to support the comparisons you made.


art barr

 

[Art Barr]

To the OP: you gotta understand when this album dropped, a lot of rappers were automatically forced to step their pen game up. On the freestyle radio shows where aspiring rappers would call in to spit over the phone, MADD HEADZ WAS SOUNDING LIKE NAS. I always look at rap as before/after that album dropped.

And as for you sales point? It's not a bad question, one thing I can think of is this is another reason why this was the best period in rap music. So much was poppin that even when an album like this drop, there's just too much other dope shyt to ignore.

Think of your favorite/classic albums of the last year. Now imagine albums on that level dropping at least TWICE a month. There was just too much dopeness to be focused on any one MC.

the best thing about nas, was....
out of all the mc's out..
when nas dropped,...
nobody was the focus, except nas....
it was not until august of 1994.
did the first blaze from illmatic's original sales envelope subside a bit.
other than that,..
illmatic was the end all be all..
from what was that?!!!
illmatic dropped in what,..
I wanna say,...
march...
so from march, till august 1994, easy.
illmatic was the IT album in rap.

real talk,.....
nas, was the it album until..the release weeks of:


artifacts
organized
boogie monsters
jeru
biggie
common sense

those five releases started to take up the flames cooling off from illmatic.
at the very least, those five albums are all five star revisionist based classics, or original classics.
yet, and still...
illmatic was the top album of 94, easy.
it took a run of four to five original run classic albums.
all released six months later to cool off how much of a blaze illmatic created.



art barr

 

[Art Barr]

It's funny that Twista's Ressurection actually did only resonate within Chicago.

twista did not resonate with general Chicago fans until after snypaz made smoke and ride style music.

in that era,..
twista was not given the nod he earned and deserved, in Chicago like that.
twista was a fixture at the prom. point during the chi-rok meetings, with the illstate assassins.
he was in full bboy vibe at the time resurrection dropped.
plus, I am sure nobody other than the contingent of fans from the prom. point/chi rock era.
could tell you about the blue gargoyle, vakill/cavalier show.

art barr

 

[BlackDroog]

I bought illmattic on CD months after it dropped.....


But it's been my favorite album ever since.

 

[UpAndComing]

what kind of logic is this. IMPACT has almost EVERY THING to do with sales. lmao.

So how do you explain industry plants?

 

[MINT]

of course, everybody tried to release an album produced by an army of producers; and all of them failed

 

[Bugsmoran]

.
in 1994, pac was kinda like a nobody.....
he originally, was a movie money marketed feature gangsta rap artist.
which means he was pegged to be a platinum gangsta rapper as the general rule.

art barr

Art Barr you know ur my homie right?.... please give me some of wut your smoking

lets leave movies out of this and just talk about Pac's music... hit songs is hit songs...he was a certified Rap Star after I Get Around and Keep Your Head Up dropped.. how can u call him a nobody? if he didnt make the movie Juice he still wouldve been a rap star based on hit records







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


because Nas was a nobody until It Was Written dropped in 1996

 

[UpAndComing]

it looks like youre talking commercial impact.

nas & black moon are the type of artists where everybody had they chit, but it was usually either a dub or a bootleg. that doesn't take away from their albums' popularity & impact on a cultural level.

also, theyre not in the same grouping of mos def. hes one of those okay-player rappers. those crowds love nas & black moon - yes. but nas & black moon have a much longer reach than mos def.

I don't think anybody is comparing illmatic's impact to that of licensed to ill, grodt, or the other albums people mentioned in here like e.99 eternal, matw, etc.

Please explain what you mean by Nas and Black Moon have a longer reach than Mos Def
I agree, I just can't put my finger on why Mos is not on the level of Nas

 

[Bolzmark]

Yes it did have that kind of impact. Think of how Kendricks Control verse had everybody goin nuts. It was like that but a whole albums worth. Kill yaself at anybody who brings up sales in regards to this album. Sales? SALES??? Vanilla Ice's first album sold more than the WHOLE CAREERS of Rakim, Kane, KRS-1, and G-Rap PUT TOGETHER. So kill that argument.

 

[Bugsmoran]

Please explain what you mean by Nas and Black Moon have a longer reach than Mos Def
I agree, I just can't put my finger on why Mos is not on the level of Nas

we basically explained it for you...

i explained that the average Backpacker was black when Nas and Blackmoon first dropped..

Wacky was saying Mos Def fanbase was the dying breed of Black Backpackers


i said Nas started to reach more people by having a hit song with Lauryn Hill, working with Dr Dre, beefing with 2 pac and Jay z

 

[Taadow]

Even so, you not hearing about him is a completely separate topic from "did he have impact?". By '94 he was all over The Source, Rap City, YO! MTV Raps, etc. So somebody was checking for him on a mainstream level. Honestly I don't know how people avoided Nas in '94, unless they completely ignored all forms of rap media for a good 2-3 years.

How old were you in '94? That also has a lot to do with it, like Wacky D said.

Fred.

I'll even concede that.

In '94 I was 11. But, I watched Rap City (and Video Soul, and Video Vibrations, and Yo!) regularly, and I had a radio.
Plus, my sisters were much older than I was and they had Columbia House, so they had almost everything
that came out. I mean, I was old enough to appreciate EPMD, Gangstarr, Brand Nubian, Tribe, and Pete & CL before this time. I just had never heard about Nas.

 

[ryshy]

let me quote jay z for you:
'........I had the Illmatic, on bootleg
The shyt was so ahead, thought we was all dead......'

here is dream hampton on how pac felt about illmatic:
'Hampton credits Illmatic with providing a common artistic ground for rappers on the West Coast and East Coast rap scenes. In the 2009 essay "Born Alone, Die Alone," she recounts the album's impact on West Coast artist, Tupac Shakur. While working as a journalist for The Source in 1994, Hampton covered three court cases involving Tupac. Around this time, she received an advance-copy of Illmatic and immediately dubbed a cassette version for Tupac, who became "an instant convert" of the album. The next day, she writes, Tupac "arrived in his assigned courtroom blasting Illmatic so loudly that the bailiff yelled at him to turn it off before the judge took his seat on the bench.'

we all know that biggie won the best lyricist award around that time and even he, in his acceptance speech, acknowledged that maybe nas shoulda gotten that award.

mc serch claimed that he once discovered a garage with 60 000 bootleg illmatics.
how many albums you know of that are still selling 7 years after being released. not many . speaks of its quality!

make of it what you want, but the album definitely had an impact. countless artist of that time and time's there-after have heaped all kinds of praise on the album!!!!

....name a rapper that I ain't influenced....' might be one of the truest lines that came outta that jay/nas beef!!!!!!!!

/thread

 

[hex]

I'll even concede that.

In '94 I was 11. But, I watched Rap City (and Video Soul, and Video Vibrations, and Yo!) regularly, and I had a radio.
Plus, my sisters were much older than I was and they had Columbia House, so they had almost everything
that came out. I mean, I was old enough to appreciate EPMD, Gangstarr, Brand Nubian, Tribe, and Pete & CL before this time. I just had never heard about Nas.

He probably just slipped under your radar then.

On a side note, that color blue on the OG Coli Night back ground looks 3D in the black box when I respond. Seriously, try it out. It's weird as fukk.

Fred.

 

[daze23]

Nas was already well known since his appearance on Live at the BBQ in 1991. Half time was released in 1992 as soundtrack to a major spike lee film.

it was on the Zebrahead soundtrack. Michael Rapaport's first movie, but nothing to do with Spike Lee, and hardly "major"

Breaking Atoms is up there with these other albums that never even went gold, and Live at the BBQ wasn't even a single (although it was the b-side to Just Hangin' Out)

 

[daze23]

94 was the first time I heard someone make the distinction between "rap" and "hip-hop"... and it was this Haitian kid in South Florida. obviously most peeps were just into whatever was on the radio, and/or the local flavor (Miami Bass), but there's always peeps that are more into the music