Illmatic (Aniv) (Clean) [Clean, Extra tracks]

Nas | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 30, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Clean, Extra tracks
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0001MDPVS
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #317,709 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AMAZING!!!!, August 7, 2005

By 

Big Dave "Dave" (New Jeraules) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Illmatic (Aniv) (Clean) (Audio CD)

This album just blows your mind...Its easily one of the best 3 rap albums ever realesed..My personal ranking is at 3 behind "Ready To Die" and "It takes a nation of millions to hold us back" but u can argue any of the 3 in any order..heres my review
1.Genesis 10/10 nice intro..I like how it leads into the 1st song

2.N.Y. State of Mind 10/10 This aint a billy joel song people.. this track will blow your mind lyrically he spits it all like its one verse..and the hook is all said twice and the lyrics change for that too

3. Life's a B**** 10/10 one of the best tracks on the album.. the only track with a guest..the hook is sick as hell and AZ and the piano loops make it sound amazing

4.The World is Yours 10/10 My favorite track on here..The hook is bangin..the beats crazy..one of the lines in this song was sampled in Jay-z's song "dead presidents"

5.Halftime 10/10 my favorite metaphor on this album= "with more kicks than a baby in a mother's stomach"

6.Memory Lane(sittin in da park) 9.5/10 its a masterpiece but it just feels a little depressing when u listen to it

7.One Love 9.5/10 this aint bob marley but Nas tears it up here

8.One time 4 your Mind 10/10 my second favorite track here..sooo gooood
9.Represent 9/10 again he tears it up
10.It ain't hard to tell 9.5/10 great way to end it

Again theres too many classics on this album to ignore it... easily one of the 3 best albums ever..its hip hop in its truest form w/o the bling bling and materialistic things on T.V. that give the genre a negative image..U know hip hop is an art form after listening to this..Its groundbreaking in a different way then "Ready To Die" or "It takes a nation of millions to hold us back" but its still original and does not dissapoint.. a masterpiece

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good refresher course..., July 18, 2005

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Illmatic (Aniv) (Clean) (Audio CD)

...If you've only recently become a Nas fan, and you don't own Illmatic, this album is a must-buy. After 10 years, Illmatic is still the blueprint of east-coast rap. Nas has been, and still remains one of the best lyricists in the game. It's true this album is very short, but in most cases, long doesn't always mean GOOD, and Nas keeps it short and sweet here. If you haven't heard classics like 'Life's a B****' (featuring AZ), and 'The World is Yours', you haven't listened to real east-coast hip-hop.

Like I mentioned earlier, this album is perfect if you don't already own Illmatic for some reason, because it's the original album, with upgraded sound quality. The remixes and unreleased tracks could have been better though, but they are still a nice addition. So spend a few extra bucks and pick this one up instead of the original, it IS worth it.

2.0 out of 5 stars Classic Album, Bad Remixes, Alright Bonuses, Awful Edits, January 28, 2012

By 

MDT (LEO!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Illmatic (Aniv) (Clean) (Audio CD)

I have this weird compulsion to where I feel the need to purchase the clean versions as well as the explicit versions of albums. Sometimes you get neat little bonuses that way; some clean versions will have their radio or TV edit versions where sometimes words are replaced, or on very rare occasions you get a bonus track not on the explicit album. That's why, when I saw both the explicit and edited editions of this album at my local FYE on sale (The clean one for three dollars less), I decided to grab both.

Let's start with the first disc - the original album. The original album is solid the whole way through. I remember the first time I heard Illmatic and I wasn't all that impressed with it, thinking that the album was a bit overhyped. After growing up a bit, maturing a little, I see Illmatic as a gritty, rough and somewhat unpolished testament to Nas as an artist just starting to get on the scene and trying to stand out from other artists in his field, and even though this was in the time of CDs where a lot of artists broke past the forty minute time frame of vinyl albums and a lot of albums of the time were starting to average in at about an hour, Nas rocked the scene with a ten track album, one of the tracks only being an intro so in actuality there's only 9 songs. There's so much going on in the songs, in the instrumentals and in the lyrics, and sometimes his words go on to sound less like a rap song but more like a well-written crime novel.

The edited version of the first disc does not preserve any of that, as instead of having words just drop out for censoring purposes like a lot of other releases, it reverses all the words against the beat. One of the songs' endings is played backwards for a good fifteen seconds straight - it just ruins the whole mood of the song. I'm sure there's a technical reason for this - maybe the master recordings would have been too troublesome to go back and drop the expletives out of, but it just leaves you with something nobody is really gonna want to listen to. Not to mention that not only are obscenities cut out, but almost any reference to guns or drugs are also played backwards, which - if you've ever listened to this or any other Nas album - you'll know this happens about ever twenty seconds or less. At one point, it censored "bullet" in a moment where he said something like "bullet holes" or "bullet wounds" - in my opinion, not something that really needed censoring.

The second disc - the supplemental bonus material. Included are four remixes of songs from the original album, all of them are pretty forgettable. Some of the lyrics, if not all of them, have been rerecorded as you can tell by certain inflections on words that Nas makes that he didn't in the original album version. For one of them, "It Ain't Hard To Tell", he actually changes some of the lyrics. It's not bad, but it's not great or really all that necessary. Then there's two new tracks, both of which aren't bad. One song, Nas kind of goes on for a bit too long bragging about how the first he just spit was written during the Illmatic era ten years ago to the point of being obnoxious. Overall though, both songs are worth a listen and really the only highlight of the second disc. On the positive side of the censoring issue as well, all the tracks on this disc have been edited properly. Words either drop out or are played backwards only on the vocal track, keeping the beat in time and not messing with the rhythm.

Presentation-wise, the package is okay. Some pictures, what appear to be outtakes of the original Illmatic photos, but that's about it. No liner notes, no retrospective note from Nas about looking back at the album that he references on pretty much every release since - just credits and the same old thank yous from years ago. Not that big of a deal.

Overall, if you don't have a copy of Illmatic already, sure - pick up the CD. But, please, even if you like clean versions or are just purchasing the album for a child or something, do NOT bother with this edition. Get the explicit one. If you're buying this to play it on a college radio station or something, do NOT bother. If you're handy with GoldWave, you could make this clean version yourself maybe two hours and it'd still probably sound better. The only good edited portion of this release is the second disc, but the second disc is musically the worst portion of the package. It's like choosing between watching Citizen Kane on a static-filled 19" tube TV off a VHS with bad tracking or settling for watching a 55" LED TV playing the blu-ray of Ernest Scared Stupid in full 1080p. The pros and cons of each disc nix each other out for the most part leaving you with a product that's almost impossible to enjoy.

Just buy the advisory edition. For the cost, you might as well pick up the anniversary edition with these bonus tracks so you can at least hear the two new tracks, but the original album is the main feature. A classic somewhat torn apart in this particular release.