Illmatic - Recording

Recording

Prior to recording, DJ Premier had listened to Nas' debut single, later stating "When I heard 'Half Time', that was some next shit to me. That's just as classic to me as 'Eric B For President' and 'The Bridge'. It just had that type of effect. As simple as it is, all of the elements are there. So from that point, after Serch approached me about doing some cuts, it was automatic. You'd be stupid to pass that up even if it wasn't payin' no money." Serch later noted the chemistry between Nas and DJ Premier, recounting that "Primo and Nas, they could have been separated at birth. It wasn't a situation where his beats fit their rhymes, they fit each other." While Serch reached out to DJ Premier, Large Professor contacted Pete Rock to collaborate with Nas on what became "The World Is Yours". Shortly afterwards, producers Q-Tip and L.E.S. chose to work on the album. Nas' father, Olu Dara, also contributed with a cornet solo on "Life's a Bitch", which features rapper AZ.

At the time of its recording, expectations in the hip hop scene were high for Illmatic. In a 1994 interview for The Source, which dubbed him "the second coming", Nas spoke highly of the album, saying that "this feels like a big project that's gonna affect the world We in here on the down low doing something for the world. That's how it feels, that's what it is. For all the ones that think it's all about some ruff shit, talkin' about guns all the time, but no science behind it, we gonna bring it to them like this." AZ recounted recording on the album, "I got on Nas' album and did the 'Life's a Bitch' song, but even then I thought I was terrible on it, to be honest. But once people started hearing that and liking it, that's what built my confidence. I thought, 'OK, I can probably do this.' That record was everything. To be the only person featured on Illmatic when Nas is considered one of the top men in New York at that time, one of the freshest new artists, that was big." During the sessions, Nas composed the song "Nas Is Like", which he later recorded as a single for his 1999 album I Am….

Concerning the recording of the album's opening song "N.Y. State of Mind", producer DJ Premier later stated "Nas — he’s one of our saviors now. When we did ‘N.Y. State of Mind,’ at the beginning when he says, ‘Straight out the dungeons of rap / Where fake niggas don’t make it back,’ then you hear him say, ‘I don’t know how to start this shit,’ ’cause he had just written it. He’s got the beat running in the studio, but he doesn’t know how he’s going to format how he’s going to convey it. So he’s going, ‘I don’t know how to start this shit,’ and I’m counting him in . One, two, three. And then you can hear him go, ‘Yo,’ and then he goes right into it." DJ Premier later discussed the unexpectedness of Nas' delivery during the recording, stating "He didn’t know how he was gonna come in, but he just started going because we were recording. I’m actually yelling, ‘We’re recording!’ and banging on the window. ‘Come on, get ready!’ You hear him start the shit: Rappers…. And then everyone in the studio was like, ‘Oh, my God’, ’cause it was so unexpected. He was not ready. So we used that first verse. And that was when he was up and coming, his first album. So we was like, 'Yo, this guy is gonna be big.'"