♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: The following program is rated TV-MA.

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("N.Y. State of Mind" begins) MC: ♪ Yo, it's time, it's time ♪ ♪ Yeah, it's time, man ♪ MC: ♪ Yo, tell 'em, Nas ♪ NAS: ♪ Straight out the dungeons of rap ♪ ♪ Where fake niggas won't make it back ♪ ♪ I don't know how to start this (no audio), man ♪ MC: ♪ Here we go, here we go, here we go ♪ NAS: ♪ Rappers, I monkey flip 'em ♪ ♪ With the funky rhythm I be kickin' ♪ ♪ Musician, inflictin' composition of pain ♪ ♪ Scarface, sniffin' cocaine ♪ ♪ Holdin' an M16 with the pen, I'm extreme ♪ ♪ Now, bullet holes left in my peepholes ♪ ♪ Suited up in street clothes ♪ ♪ Hand me a .9 and I'll defeat foes ♪ As I think about this kid who wrote this when he was 17, and I don't know how.

I just don't understand how.

♪ Laughin' at baseheads tryna to sell some broken amps ♪ ♪ G-packs get off quick, forever talk (no audio) ♪ ♪ Reminiscin'...

ROB MARKMAN: He was about 20 years old when the album was released, so a lot of this is coming of age, as a man, I'm starting to understand the world around me.

♪ Once they caught us off-guard MAC-10 was in the grass ♪ ♪ I ran like a cheetah thoughts of an assassin ♪ ♪ Picked the MAC up, told brothers, "Back up!"

♪ ♪ The MAC spit, lead was hittin' niggas, one ran ♪ SALAMISHAH TILLET: We should also think of him as a musical, poetic prodigy, that we see this black boy genius who has this workman-like quality, and lyrical precision and beauty articulating all of that in one song.

♪ Now I'm runnin' to the building lobby ♪ ♪ It was full of children ♪ ♪ Prob'ly couldn't see... ♪ - ♪ So what you sayin' ♪ - ♪ The game ain't the same, ♪ Got little niggas pullin' the triggers ♪ He's impeccable with words.

The way he puts his wordplay, it's like a dance that he does.

MC: ♪ They run up on us!

♪ ♪ 45s and gauges MACs, in fact ♪ ♪ Same niggas catch you back-to-back ♪ ♪ Snatchin' your cracks in black ♪ Probably the most visual storyteller, you know, maybe ever in rap.

NAS: ♪ I know this crackhead ♪ ♪ Who say she got to smoke nice rock ♪ ♪ If it's good she'll bring you customers ♪ In measuring pots ♪ I think Nas is one of the greatest poets not only hip hop has seen but music has seen.

♪ It drops deep as it does in my breath ♪ ♪ I never sleep ♪ CROWD: ♪ Sleep is the cousin of death ♪ NAS: ♪ Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined ♪ ♪ I think of crime when I'm in a New York state of mind ♪ MC: ♪ Say what, say what, say what ♪ MC and NAS: ♪ New York state of mind ♪ MC: ♪ Say what, say what, say what ♪ MC and NAS: ♪ New York state of mind ♪ ELISA NEW: In 2002, Harvard University opened the doors of the world's first academic hip hop archive.

The archive's mission: to provide an institutional home for an artform and cultural movement that had, over the last 20 years, achieved global importance.

In the fall of 2013, when the Archive's first research fellowship was established, it was named for Nasir Jones, whose pioneering album, Illmatic, was just then being reissued in a 20-year anniversary edition.

Visibly moved by the occasion, Nas accepted the honor on behalf of friends who had not survived, and he offered tribute to hip hop, the young art form that gave scope to his own talent.

Ask hip hop-heads, and what they'll say is it was Nas' artistry that made rap an art form.

And so, Nas's technique was where I started when I spoke to him after the Harvard ceremony, and then a few months later in L.A. And his technique was the first topic of my conversation with scholar Salamishah Tillet, and then with a group of Nas' friends and fans who met me to discuss his work at the headquarters of Genius, a website for the analysis and annotation of musical and verbal texts, including hip hop.

MC: ♪ Here we go, here we go here we go ♪ NAS: ♪ Rappers, I monkey flip 'em ♪ ♪ With the funky rhythm I be kickin' ♪ YOUNG NIK: "Musician, inflictin' composition of pain, I'm like Scarface, sniffin' cocaine, holdin' an M16, see with the pen I'm extreme."

"Rappers, I monkey flip 'em, "with the funky rhythm I be kickin'."

That's a lot, just fitting so many rhymes into, you know, into the verse.

He's packing so much in this piece.

And each word, each line has a precision.

The same joy that you get from saying, you know, "Peter Piper picked a pepper."

You know what I'm saying?

It's the alliteration, it's the repetition of sounds.

Well, his technical skill was breakthrough at the time.

You know, there's internal rhyme structure, too, and, you know, the rhymes were just kind of the last syllable, and now he's doing this two or three or four times within two weeks, you know.

NAS: ♪ Rappers, I monkey flip 'em ♪ ♪ With the funky rhythm I be kickin' ♪ ♪ Musician, inflictin' composition of pain ♪ ♪ Scarface, sniffin' cocaine ♪ ♪ Holdin' an M16, with the pen I'm extreme ♪ YOUNG NIK: Any way he can, he's inflicting the composition of pain with the pen, like, they don't know how to take it.

He's so eloquent with his wordplay and with the words he choose to use.

You're a rapper, what do you mean "composition"?

How do put rapper in... like, no one, up to that point in time, no one was actually looking at the words and equating it to art, or equating it to poetry.

How did he put these words together as a kid who didn't even graduate high school?

How did he do that?

There's a language of the subculture.

You know, certain neighborhoods, spin... spin the words around a lot different than others.

Italians say different things, Irish say different things.

Jamaicans, forget about it.

They got a whole different way of spinning words around, and... That spinning words as though it's a record.

NAS: Exactly.

Exactly.

So, I talk from that point of view, that-that language around my neighborhood that everybody uses.

Langston Hughes would say "a river of language," that you... the language of a neighborhood or a subculture, and that you are honoring the poetics that exist in these neighborhoods.

NAS: Yeah.

I'm a disciple of the streets.

Like, this is... the streets is my world, it's everything.

And I'm from it.

I'm of it, I love it.

Was there a moment, a different moment, a moment with you thinking about your own words?

It had to start at a really early age for me.

You were eight or nine?

Seven, eight.

And you started to love the sound of words.

You know, the first things that get cut in the school system are the music programs, right?

So, kids in New York aren't learning how to play instruments, right?

So how do they express themselves?

They get their mother's and father's disco records and two turntables, and they cut between the beat break, which is the part of the song where it's just a drum break with no words.

And you would cut back and forth, and you would extend that for several minutes so you can rhyme over a part of the song that didn't have words on it.

So Nas says, "I'm the smooth criminal on beat breaks."

I noticed the power in poetry through rap music when I was a kid.

There was a guy named T La Rock, and he made a song called "It's Yours."

"Commentating, illustrating, description giving, adjectives."

He was saying words like a teacher would say, but there was a rhythm to it and the track, the beat underneath of it was hard, and it was like he created these visuals in my head, and I said, "This guy is amazing."

NAS: ♪ Musician, inflictin' composition of pain ♪ ♪ Scarface, sniffin' cocaine ♪ ♪ Holdin' an M16 with the pen I'm extreme ♪ ♪ Now, bullet holes left in my peepholes ♪ ♪ Suited up in street clothes ♪ STOUTE: It was the very first time that anyone in the art form know how to put words together that gave you specific, specific, granular details that had that level of texture.

"Bullet holes left in my peepholes."

And so there, there's obviously the double entendre of peepholes being his people.

He's kind of meditating or marking the everyday-ness of black death, right?

Is there also, perhaps, the door?

A peephole that people shoot through.

TILLET: Exactly.

There was a lot of incidents where if you had a problem with someone, they might-- they can't find you, they might come to your door and shoot through your peephole.

I mean, that was on the news back then.

What else could peepholes be?

TILLET: And then peepholes being his... what he's providing us, right?

He's a... he's the... both muse, but the seer.

He's giving us a kind of insight into this community.

The letter "I".

TILLET: The letter "I".

Optical.

Yeah, optical or also, the surveilling eye.

There's, you know, there's a number of eyes that I think are operating here.

♪ Each block... ♪ MC: ♪... is like a maze ♪ NAS: ♪ Full of black rats trapped ♪ ♪ Plus the Island is packed ♪ ♪ From all I hear in all the stories ♪ When my... MC: ♪ Peoples come back black ♪ He compares the blocks to a maze full of black rats trapped.

Which is interesting, because the infrastructure of Queensbridge looks, from the top, like a maze.

You know, everybody's stacked on top of each other there.

MARKMAN: I don't even think they picked up garbage three times a week in New York like they do now.

You know, so you saw rats on the street, and it really felt like a maze.

And, you know, when he says "the Island is packed," he's, of course, referring to Riker's Island.

At least a parallel to slavery and a parallel to basically being trapped in a life and in a world that you can't get out of.

NAS: ♪ Composition of pain ♪ ♪ Scarface, sniffin' cocaine ♪ ♪ Holdin' an M16 with the pen I'm extreme ♪ Scarface was a super influential film among rappers in particular, but, you know, among everybody, I think of that generation.

MARKMAN: I mean, that movie came out in 1983, so by the time Nas gets to writing his songs, I bet he saw Scarface several times, you know, as a kid, and started making the parallels of what he saw on that movie screen and what was going on in his neighborhood.

KENNEDY: Visualizing himself sort of in that, you know, iconic movie role.

TILLET: I guess back in the day, when people were having these critiques of hip hop being so violent, someone would misread that line as him endorsing a kind of hyper-violence.

Him saying "with the pen I'm extreme" I think sort of nods to with the pen, he becomes larger than life.

He can be Scarface with a pen.

I'm not saying like I want to go and hurt somebody.

NEW: No, no.

- I'm just telling you like how slick I am, and it does go back to the pen, but it's like I'm just telling you I'm slick, I can say things that you didn't think of, or I can do things you can't do.

The arsenal that he's pulling from is as deep and as heavy and as strong as an M16.

You need credibility as an artist, first, and then for anything that you say to matter.

He's announcing his arrival, and then he's also like dismissing those who, in any way, will contest his territory.

That is a description of poetry, is having a particular kind of power.

It's like my ID card, it's like-- all right, listen to this song, but remember, I'm the (no audio).

For Nas to say "my pen is extreme," again, hip hop was built off of competition, so, you know, he didn't come here to be the number two guy.

It's me letting other MCs know... - "I'm a poet."

- Right.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm a poet, and I'm the best.

In hip hop culture, you have to feel like you're the best or nobody else is going to feel like you're the best.

You have to feel like you're the best, but you also have to prove that you're the best.

NAS: ♪ It's only right I was born to use mics ♪ ♪ The stuff that I write is even tougher than dykes ♪ ♪ I've taken rappers to a new plateau, through rap slow ♪ ♪ My rhymin' is a vitamin held without a capsule ♪ "My rhyme, it is a vitamin held without a capsule."

You know, his rhymes go down easy, they're good for you, they have nutritious value.

I think ultimately, though, he's sort of saying that what he's saying, people need to hear.

♪ ♪ NAS: You know, my life when I was a kid, I loved it, you know?

That's everything, that's when you're a sponge.

That's when your imagination is being fed and, you know, you think a lot, you know?

It's a really important part of your life, your childhood.

You reveal a lot of the vulnerability of yourself and of these boys on the street.

TILLET: The album cover with the young Nasir Jones with the Queensbridge Housing Projects in the background establishes a nostalgic element of this piece, but also the meditation on black childhood that he's presenting.

Using the projects and the kid superimposed to say the content that you are about to hear, the music you're about to hear, the poetry you're about to experience.

Very literal.

It's like, I grew up in this world, and as a result of it, this is how I express myself.

And you were, after all, a boy when you wrote this.

Yeah.

There is an extraordinary perspective.

In that he sees everything a little bit, um, differently at a little bit different level of depth than, I would say, just about anybody else.

What I think of "N.Y. State of Mind" as both... operating on two levels.

It's at autobiographical and allegorical.

And we see Nas kind of operating on these two planes.

If we put this, like, song in the kind of great tradition of New York songs.

There's the Billy Joel "New York State of Mind," which is very different than Nas's, so there's that in the background and backdrop.

It's a reference to Billy Joel, and, like, kind of the great songs of New York, but from a very different lens.

A kind of much more nostalgic, but also maybe more romantic vision of New York.

(Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" playing) (Nas's "N.Y. State of Mind" playing) HOROWITZ: In those housing projects, both his brother and his best friend were shot, and his best friend was killed when he was 14 years old.

Living in that criminal, kind of, very hard life aspect, parallel to hell.

NAS: ♪ I got so many rhymes I don't think I'm too sane ♪ ♪ Life is parallel to Hell but I... MC: ♪ Must maintain ♪ He's bringing us back to Queensbridge and into his childhood on one hand, and yet, he's using that experience to kind of create a tapestry of what American life looked like, black American life, black urban American life looks like in the late '80s, early '90s.

But then he's also an artist telling a story of what that is, so he's both in it and then he's above it.

♪ Niggas be runnin' through the block shootin' ♪ ♪ Time to start a revolution ♪ MC: ♪ Catch a body head for Houston ♪ ♪ Once they caught us off-guard, MAC-10 was in the grass ♪ ♪ I ran like a cheetah, thoughts of an assassin ♪ ♪ Picked the MAC up, told brothers, "Back up!"

♪ ♪ The MAC spit ♪ ♪ Lead was hittin' niggas, one ran ♪ MC: ♪ We made him backflip ♪ "Lead was hittin' niggas, one ran, I made him backflip."

So it's, like, he's... his storytelling was amazing right there, like you can actually picture everything he's saying.

And I hear in those lines the kind of desperation... Yeah.

- ...and the adrenaline.

- Right.

- But also a kind of fantasy, you know, a fantasy life that you're a cheetah, that, you know, you made somebody backflip.

This doesn't just feel like a poem or a song, there's a whole choreography we're watching, it feels like a movie.

Exactly.

It's such a movie!

♪ Chicks scream, my arm shook, couldn't look ♪ ♪ Gave another squeeze, heard it click, "Yo, my (no audio) is stuck!"

♪ ♪ Try to cock it, it wouldn't shoot, now I'm in danger ♪ ♪ Pulled my (no audio) back ♪ ♪ Had three bullets caught up in the chamber ♪ I ran like a cheetah, picked the MAC up, told brothers, "Back up!"

The MAC spit.

Heard a few chicks scream, my arm shook, couldn't look.

Gave another squeeze, heard it click.

(pow) My (no audio) is stuck.

I try to shoot it, it wouldn't shoot, now I'm in danger.

I pulled it back, there were three bullets jammed up in the chamber.

You see it.

Now he's telling the story and you see it.

So, your greatest fear is that this weapon that you tested when you bought it, would jam on you.

STOUTE: When the gun is stuck, and he couldn't look.

Like, you know what that is, he's a little kid, he's doing something and he can't look at it, he can't look and squeeze, he's showing that he's not this guy, but he's doing something... he's a product of his environment.

You don't know how good it works, teenager, doesn't know anything about it, just know I need one of these things.

♪ Try to cock it, it wouldn't shoot, now I'm in danger ♪ ♪ Pulled the (no audio) back ♪ Had three bullets caught up in the chamber ♪ ♪ And now I'm runnin' through the building lobby ♪ ♪ It was full of children prob'ly couldn't see ♪ MC: ♪ So what you sayin' ♪ He rhymes about getting in this shootout and he runs into the lobby, and he says, you know, the children probably couldn't even see as high as I be.

And there's two things going on there.

One, he was probably high, you know, smokin' weed, so the children couldn't see as high as I be, because of their innocence.

But also because he's a little bit older, this violence is going on from of young children who can't understand it.

His whole tone changes when he hits that line, so he's... it's the highest adrenaline point imaginable, and then a moment of reflection.

Here he is, an assassin, and then all of a sudden, there's little kids.

And guess what, they're in the game, too.

The word "children" there just sort of tore... tore my heart.

It was very necessary for me to use "children."

- Mm-hmm.

- They're important.

I see them, they're there, they were me at one time.

♪ The game ain't the same ♪ ♪ Got little niggas pullin' the triggers ♪ ♪ Fame to their names ♪ ♪ Claim some corners crews without guns are goners ♪ ♪ Broad daylight ♪ ♪ Stick-up kids ♪ MC: ♪ They run up on us ♪ ♪ 45s and gauges, MACs in fact ♪ ♪ Same niggas will catch you back-to-back ♪ ♪ Snatchin' your cracks in black ♪ ♪ There's a snitch on the block gettin' niggas knocked ♪ KENNEDY: You know, when he's talking about, you know, shootouts and talking about people addicted to drugs, it's not... it's not like he's glorifying it, but he's saying, "Hey, look at what's happening here."

Like, this is a tragedy.

He's not the only one that grew up around violence and drugs.

He's not saying I'm any different, this is the circumstance.

This is what everyone's doing.

This is what young kids are growing up in.

And the truth of the matter is Queensbridge is Cabrini-Greens, which is Marcy Projects, which is Compton, which is Liberty City, which is the Fifth Ward.

Like, these circumstances, this story transfers to all these ghettos all around the country, so they all identified with this story, 'cause this was the byproduct of what took place when you put drugs in these areas.

It got down to children.

I'm telling you what I'm seeing, or saw, and then you know that they should not be me, they should not be the narrator when they grow up.

And they don't have a choice.

♪ But yo you gotta slide on a vacation ♪ ♪ Inside information, large niggas erasin' MC: ♪ And their wives basin' ♪ NAS: ♪ It drops deep as it does in my breath ♪ ♪ I never sleep ♪ CROWD: ♪ 'Cause sleep is the cousin of death ♪ ♪ Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined ♪ ♪ I think of crime when I'm in a New York state of mind ♪ MC: ♪ Say what, say what, say what, New York state of mind ♪ The line that leads us into the chorus, "I think of crime when I'm in a New York state of mind."

So, you know, on a literal level, the entire song, or the entire poem, describes a kind of criminality that exists within the environs of his world.

But then also, I think, this is where the kind of critique comes in.

So who are the real criminals?

Are the real criminals the people who are peddling drugs in their community, or are the criminals a kind of state, like a surveilling state that allows these drugs to come into their community in the first place.

So I think the word "crime" itself, there, operates on multiple levels.

But the phrase "I think of..." "I think of crime," which could mean, I have a great idea, let's go commit a crime, "I think of."

But also I meditate on crime, I see the impact of crime.

Nas gives us a particular insight into the kind of underbelly, or the underworld of New York, and then lifts that up to be the way that which we should understand how many people exist as part of the landscape, but also are victims of economic injustice or racial injustice.

♪ But yo, you gotta slide on a vacation ♪ ♪ Inside information, large niggas erasin' ♪ MC: ♪ And their wives basin' ♪ NAS: ♪ It drops deep as it does in my breath ♪ ♪ I never sleep ♪ CROWD: ♪ 'Cause sleep is the cousin of death ♪ The line "I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death," sealed him as great, off the top.

One of the greatest lines in hip hop history, one of the greatest lyrics.

When people heard that line, they would walk around mesmerized.

No one could understand how someone could put a line that deep, that poetic, that smart and intelligent inside of a rap song.

So, "sleep is the cousin of death," he don't wanna sleep, maybe he don't wanna sleep 'cause he don't wanna miss anything.

He's trying to be successful, so he don't want to miss an opportunity, so he doesn't want to go to sleep.

And, you know, where he grew up, you sort of had to know... You had to be aware, you had to always be on lookout, you had to sleep with one eye open, in a sense.

You never want to get caught sleepin', especially in Queensbridge.

You know, you never want to be caught not paying attention.

If you are caught sleeping, if you are caught not aware and not on point, in a sense, then death was right around the corner.

♪ Inside information, large niggas erasin' ♪ MC: ♪ And their wives basin' ♪ ♪ It drops deep as it does in my breath ♪ ♪ I never sleep ♪ CROWD: ♪ 'Cause sleep is the cousin of death ♪ ♪ Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined ♪ ♪ I think of crime when I'm in a New York state of mind ♪ MC: ♪ Say what, say what, say what ♪ NAS and MC: ♪ New York state of mind ♪ MC: ♪ Say what, say what, say what ♪ NAS and MC: ♪ New York state of mind ♪ HOROWITZ: You know, one of the things that's very... that's completely unique about Nas is his perception of the world.

You know, he's an artist, in part, because of his, you know, perception and talent and depth and intellect, and partly because of his origin and the circumstances that he came up through.

Hip hop becomes the vehicle for him to, in some ways, outrun the circumstances that he's born into.

♪ ♪ NAS: So today, you know, thank God I'm here.

I made it through the storm.

There's a very healthy future for hip hop music in America.

They're starting to want to see other American stories, other than just one story, so this one, I hope it opens up that lane.

This thing we're doing, I hope it opens that up so that every story's told, everyone can be inspired and then be uplifted.

We give you the real, so, as long as real means something, hip hop will mean something.

("N.Y. State of Mind" fades out) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪