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His birthday would’ve felt like less of a blessing if it hadn’t been for the curses of all his friends’ deaths (“I’m destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it,” says AZ). He’s assured where AZ was anxious on the first verse, awed where AZ was dejected, but he evokes the feelings of promise and power so well because he never loses hold of their opposites.
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![nas hate me now cross nas hate me now cross](http://splashysplash.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/nas-iced-out-cuban-link-chain-diddy-mercedes-benz-pendant.jpg)
When he says, on the second verse of “Life’s a Bitch,” “I woke up early on my born day I’m twenty, it’s a blessing/The essence of adolescence leaves my body, now I’m fresh and/My physical frame is celebrated cause I made it/One quarter through life some Godly-like thing created,” it’s so powerful because of all he leaves out. Anyone can see the incredible density and precision of the language, but you probably have to listen to it to feel its range and depth of emotion. But despite a beautiful song here and there, and no matter how well his albums have sold, he hasn’t made any remotely as good as “Illmatic.” His art made him the person he wanted to be, which made him unable to make that kind of art anymore. He rapped his way out of them as he enshrined them he got what he wished for. He does, even though he’s twenty years removed from the life he made his masterpiece out of, his portrait of the artist as a young man in the Queensbridge housing projects in Long Island City that he loved and feared and resented. Like this is Nas, who became famous with his second album, in 1996, but who made his name with his first album, “Illmatic,” twenty years ago, and likes to rap about how he still looks like the twenty-year-old who made it.