As Nas’ Illmatic celebrates its 20th anniversary, the retrospectives are pouring in, and it’s only fitting. The Queensbridge MC recently performed on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon in support of his Illmatic XX reissue, which arrives on April 15 (preview it with a remix of “Life’s a Bitch”). On April 16, a making-of documentary, Time Is Illmatic, premieres at New York City’s Beacon Theater as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.
“With Illmatic, I was trying to make the perfect album,” the man born Nasir Jones says in the film trailer above (via Vulture). “I was trying to make you experience my life. I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently. I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing and becoming something more real. I gave you what the streets felt like, what it sounded like, tasted like, felt like, all in that album. And I tried to capture it like no one else could.”
