Nas's Illmatic Read Online Free Page A

arrived on September 14, 1973. An Arabic name, Nasir means “helper” (sometimes “supporter” or “protector”). Nas would not live in Brooklyn long; before he was old enough to attend school, the family had moved to the Queensbridge housing projects in Long Island City, the westernmost section of the borough of Queens.
    The development, named after the Queensboro Bridge above which it is located, is the largest such project in the United States, built in 1939 by the government which made it a point to prevent the housing from becoming attractive to people who would other wise pump funds into the private housing market. Consequently, amenities were limited andcertain cost-saving touches were woven into the operational fabric, including elevators which only stopped at odd numbered floors.
    The buildings themselves are similar to the failed projects that jut out of inner cities throughout America, constant reminders of an other wise forgotten branch of political vision that erroneously believed flexibility and individuality could be sacrificed at the altar of societal convenience and efficiency. A band of red runs all around many of the buildings about four feet off the ground, with other s colored a fading brown, unifying the 96 buildings that make up the project, as if one needed an indicator that these crumbling monoliths were something different than their surrounding buildings.
    At ground level, standing along the perimeter, the buildings look older, smaller, and yet more welcoming than their subsequent counterparts, the giant multi-floored boxes that litter the skyline. In comparison to those towering relics, Queensbridge’s buildings are a mere six stories: they could be any other apartment complex in the heart of a city. Just a block south of the buildings stands the bridge the projects are named after. Unlike many notable hip hop neighborhoods in New York, e.g. Jay-Z’s famed Marcy projects in Brooklyn, which essentially exist in an entirely different world than Manhattan, midtown is directly across the water, the Empire State Building hovering in surprisingly close proximity.
    Inside the courtyards that each block of buildings contains, pathways lined with park benches and short fences surround a basketball court and a small children’s playground, the self-contained common ground of a massive community. These days, just a moment away from the city in the new gentrified New York, the nearby subway stop is surrounded by a different kind of self-contained community: luxury condominiums for white urbanites looking for a (relatively) cheapbut convenient alternative to living in Manhattan. In this new context, walking around Queensbridge makes the buildings seem less like the rowhouses of Baltimore or the bombed-out towers of Chicago and more like the crumbling memory of basic affordable housing for low-income families.
    In pictures taken from above, however, the buildings stand out like castle walls protecting more castle walls, stretching off into the horizon, a cluster of green sticking out in the middle. The rooftops weave and dead-end from up there, thanks to a theory that a more innovative design would provide the residents with more sunlight, leaving each unit Y-shaped. Alternating between a ground-level starting point and the removed omnipotence of a bird’s eye view, it’s easy to see what Nas meant when he said “each block is like a maze full of black rats trapped.”
    But the playing field of Nas’s childhood is only one side of the story, for Queensbridge isn’t famous for its design, but for its culture. As he grew up, the soon-to-be-rapper was exposed to hip hop from the very beginning, putting him in a unique position. “A lot of the younger artists aren’t instructed in the education of hip hop’s history,” explains DJ Premier. “But where Nas lived in Queensbridge, he got to see MC Shan and Tragedy and all them right there every day. So he had schoolin’ right there in his own