Out of a seemingly endless array of hip hop albums, every now and again something fresh and powerful rises to the top of the pile. Hailing from the Queensbridge Housing Projects in Long Island City (home to Marley Marl among others), 20-year old Nasir "Nas" Jones is less concerned with being an impersonator than with being an originator, bypassing adolescent fantasies and B-boy braggadocio in favour of jazzy beats, rap noir realism and new answers to urban despair. ILLMATIC is his story, a cautionary contemporary tale of the inner city streets, and as Nas makes plain on his opener, "The Genesis", this is what he does, with or without a record contract, and it's going to be served up straight, no chaser.