Written by Erik Parker
Directed by One9
USA, 2014
According to the tale told by the documentary Time is Illmatic, an 18-year-old New York rapper named Nasir Jones, calling himself Nasty Nas, changed hip-hop forever by going onstage at a local barbeque party in Queens in 1991 and delivering a verse that included the lyric “At the age of twelve, I went to hell for snuffing Jesus.” That line was noticed by local legend MC Serch, who gave Nas a lyric on his next album, which got the attention of Columbia Records, who signed Nas to deliver a debut album that would eventually be called Illmatic. As Malcolm Gladwell might say, sometimes it’s all about being an outlier in full view of the right people.
However, Time is Illmatic succeeds as a documentary because it has almost zero focus on such oddities of the music business. Illmatic became one of the great rap albums of all time not because Nas delivered one crazy line when some important people were listening, but because he was a great creator, a lyrical artist with plenty of life experience to draw upon. Filmmakers Erik Parker and One9 deliver a film that explores his artistic process in depth.
Time is Illmatic follows the loose structure of the biopic, starting with Nas’ father, jazz musician Olu Dara, growing up in Mississippi. The film follows a nearly linear arc up to the release of Nas’ debut record in 1994. Nas grew up in the Queensbridge projects of New York City, and although his family was not mired in poverty, the crack wars of the late 1980s turned Queensbridge into one of the most brutally tough neighborhoods in the country, whether one was poor or not.
The interesting thing about this film is that it expends considerable effort in explaining how coming up rough translates into a classic rap lyric. There are no shortage of stories like Nas in the rap game: guys who had to sell drugs in their youth, might have seen best friends or members of their family shot in the street, but made it to the top with their rhyming. Adams and One9 could have just leaned on those biographical details and called it a day, but instead they interview many of the producers that Nas worked with and find the poetry and the emotion behind the lyrics. A standout interview is with Q-Tip, the producer of the song “One Love,” who explains all of the deeper meaning that the deceptively simple couplet “I heard he looks like ya / Why don’t your lady write ya?” had for him.
Then, “One Love” becomes the peak of the film, as it provides the soundtrack for a re-examination of a famous photo that was taken during the album’s publicity shoot. Of the crowd of Queensbridge residents gathered behind Nas in the photo, Nas’ brother Jabari goes through them one by one and lists those who are in jail. It’s a moving visual demonstration of a theme that Illmatic the album returns to again and again in its lyrics: Nas is standing for an entire neighborhood, and although he found a way out, for most the Bridge is a trip that ends either in prison or an early grave.
Illmatic is a dark, difficult album that is occasionally inflected in hope. Time is Illmatic visually translates that hope into triumph, and illustrates the process of creating great rap in a way that no documentary – perhaps no film, period – has previously done. It might be argued that Time is Illmatic limits itself from the beginning, that it can never be more than a companion to another great work. But even if that is true, Nas has the best companion that he could hope for.
-Mark Young