Nas

A genre’s quintessential recording is forged from the eternal quest for artistic perfection: Nas established hip-hop’s apogee with his first album, Illmatic.

Born Nasir Jones in New York City in 1973, the son of jazz musician Olu Dara redefined hip-hop in 1994 with his debut, flipping tales of structural poverty into intricate hood scripture and fomenting the boom bap style.

His follow-up, 1996’s baroque and brooding It Was Written, reinvigorated mafioso rap and built Nas’ standing as music’s foremost chronicler of crime, a distinction he vividly defended with Stillmatic in 2001.