Being a Hip-Hop Superfan in the ‘90s in the Suburbs
I’m going back to Philly on Sunday to see Nas perform as part of his tour promoting the documentary Time is Illmatic. This will be my third time seeing Nas live. I also met him back in 1999. He is my favorite artist and I have virtually his entire catalog memorized.
However, I was late on Illmatic.
One thing that has been forgotten in the victory lap that is the 20th anniversary of Nas’s debut is that it was a commercial disappointment at first – partially due to widespread bootlegging – and did not have the reach of Doggystyle or Ready to Die or even Enter the Wu-Tang [36 Chambers]. The vast majority of hip-hop fans were not even aware of it at first.
Including me.
In the mid-‘90s, it was hard for a kid from a fairly small, predominantly white town to learn about new hip-hop artists, though I studied it as if it were my doctoral thesis. I’m sure I heard “Halftime” or “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” at some point, but the artist was just another in a sea of those I didn’t know. I would try to stay up to watch “Urban Xpressions,” but that was only once a week and it had the production quality of a snuff film. MTV played only mainstream acts, usually Death Row or Bad Boy artists, unless it was 2 a.m. and it’s not like my local cable provider was going to start offering BET. The internet was…
