There is a stunning shot in “Nas: Time Is Illmatic” that captures a bird’s-eye view of the Queensbridge Houses in Queens. The public housing complex’s drab buildings zigzag across six city blocks, with pieces jutting out at different angles. There’s a strange beauty to their geometry, but they also look foreboding with their protrusions and recessions, like a fortress.
The documentary gives us some sense of life in that complex while also diving into the title’s focus: the 20th anniversary of “Illmatic,” an exalted hip-hop album by former Queensbridge resident Nas (born Nasir Jones). The movie gives a history not just of Nas’s life, but also of all those brick buildings and their residents, a few of whom found fame, while many others ended up dead or in prison. The movie is inspiring and tragic and, directed by street artist One9, it’s captured in an artful, emotional way that will speak to an audience beyond rap fans.
Nas plays the Moore Theatre on Wednesday, Nov. 15. Read more here.
Nas, now 41, comes from a long line of musicians. He took an almost immediate interest in instruments, according to his father, jazz musician Olu Dara Jones, who is interviewed extensively. But Nas didn’t take to school the same way, and his father urged him to drop out when Nas reached ninth grade, to the horror of the rest of the family.
The movie delves briefly into urban white flight and more extensively into the crack epidemic, which coincided with Nas’s childhood. All of it gives context for why “Illmatic” was such an important album, although we also hear from Erykah Badu, Cornel West and Q-Tip about its impact.
Nas is an impressive lyricist and performer, but his greatest accomplishment is giving a voice to the overlooked and ignored – such as his neighbors in Queensbridge. His songs address poverty, isolation and gang violence; “One Love” is a letter to a friend in prison, trying to buoy the inmate’s spirits. Sample lyric: “Plus congratulations you know you got a son. I heard he looks like you, why don’t your lady write you?” (As Nas performs, there are lyrics scrolling across the bottom of the screen to help viewers fully appreciate his craftsmanship.)
Nas managed to distill the facts of living at Queensbridge, but also the emotion and anger that came from an upbringing in which his brother survived a shooting and his best friend was murdered.
The movie intersperses interviews of Nas and his family with clips from concerts, plus old family movies and photos. In one of the documentary’s most touching and difficult scenes, Nas looks at a photograph that was taken of him and his friends years earlier. The rapper and his brother go through the photo rattling off, one by one, where the boys ended up, and for the most part, if they aren’t in prison then they just got out or they’re fighting a charge.
That adds to the bittersweet current that runs through the movie. Queensbridge has a lot to be proud of; Nas even has a fellowship named after him at Harvard. That’s pretty amazing for a ninth-grade dropout. But he’s an anomaly among his friends, one of the few to escape that strange geometric landscape.
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