The Beastie Boys

• Wikipedia - Beastie Boys
• It's weird thinking that Ice Cube and the whole gangsta rap movement was kind of born out of the violent/punk attitude of the Beastie Boys.
  •  ← I suspect that if three white guys that looked like this tried to start a rap group now about being violent, the concept would get laughed at.

...

• Who dat nigga thinkin' that he frontin' on Man-Man? (Man-Man)
  Get the fuck off my stage, I'm the Sandman (Sandman)
  Get the fuck off my dick, that ain't right
  I make a play fucking up your whole life
  
  These lines are not good...they sound like high school stuff.

• If I kill a nigga, it won't be the alcohol, ayy
  I'm the realest nigga after all
  
  That last line is not good.

• It isn't clear to me who he's talking to in this song. At one point it sounds like he's talking to a lady he likes, but then it seems like he may have switched to talking to his competitors.

Nas

Illmatic

• Related book: Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic
• General thoughts
  
  • The good
    • The main attraction of his rapping style, as far as I can tell, is that he has one (or more!) internal rhyme(s) on nearly _every_single_line_ without it sounding like complete gibberish, which is obviously an incredible accomplishment.
    • He's also able to make his lyrics sound dramatic / not ridiculous.
    • His flow is also–while not perfect (see "The bad" below)–overall undeniably very good, maybe even 'excellent' when compared against later artists, with the caveat that this is a different style of rapping with different constraints that he's holding himself to.
    • He doesn't have all of his rhymes at the end of the line and the same rhythm on a significant percentage of his lines, which was a big problem with earlier rap.
    • He also doesn't skimp on the lyrics the way some other rappers will, filling the time with repetitions of the chorus or variations on the beat/melody. All of his songs have a lot of original lyrics.
  • The bad
    • Illmatic seems pretty hyped, and it may have been revolutionary at the time it was released, but I don't think it holds up when compared to Biggie's / Tupac's / Eminem's best albums/songs.
    • He will sometimes pause in the middle of a sentence, which is something less-good rappers are known to do and really hurts my feeling of immersion into the lyrics.
    • He will sometimes flip his sentence-structure, which makes it harder to understand, similar to when he pauses in the middle of a sentence.
    • His producer(s) clearly aren't as good as Biggie's / Eminem's / Tupac's. He often doesn't have fun / interesting melodies. "The World is Yours",  "Memory Lane", "Represent", and "It Ain't Hard to Tell" are exceptions.
    • He doesn't alternate long (1/8th-note) and normal (1/16th-note) durations on his vowels the way Biggie / Tupac / Eminem do. So it sounds less varied.
    • He uses words / phrases that are hard to understand:
      • "Visualizin' the realism of life and actuality"
        • This is by someone else rapping a verse on one of Nas's songs, but the verse was written in Nas's style.
      • "Beef with housin' police, release scriptures that's maybe Hitler's" ← What does "scriptures that's maybe Hitler's" mean?
    • I think he's so focused on getting internal rhymes that it forces him to use awkward sentence construction, which makes it harder to follow what he's saying. IIRC Eminem has the same issue in his internal-rhyme-heavy songs.
    • He has a LOT of references/slang in his rhymes, which make it harder to follow than Biggie / Tupac / Eminem lyrics, even though those guys also use slang / references.
      • "Before a blunt, I take out my fronts" ← OK, in hindsight, I guess 'fronts' refers to his grill.
      • "That's like Malcolm X, catchin the Jungle Fever"
      • "I'll pull a number like a pager"
      • "I'm an ace when I face the bass"
      • "40-side is the place that is giving me grace"
      • "Nas will catch wreck"
      • "And told my little man that I'm a go cyprose" ← Even urbandictionary doesn't know what 'cyprose' means.
    • It's hard to say what a lot of his songs are about.
    • He doesn't have any skits or other things to mix up the flow of his album and give his listeners' brains a breather between songs.
    • A few too many references to Moet (IMO) in the second half of the album.
• Song-specific thoughts
  • The World Is Yours
    • The flow, rhymes, chorus, and melody/beat on this are sick.
    • But it's still hard to understand the ideas he's actually conveying with his words.
  • Halftime
    • Forgettable :/
    • He says "slaaave ships" in exactly the same way that Biggie would 5 months later on "Ready to Die". He also then rhymes it with "clips", which is what Biggie ended up doing.
    • On my second listen, with the lyrics in front of me for both the first and second listen, I ended up with the impression that the main idea of this song is "I'm a great rapper".
    • This song also has a sample that I'm sure I've heard on another song, and I feel it was most likely a Biggie song (which was almost certainly released after this song). It may have been a commonly-used sample. You can hear it looping from 2:41 to 3:01. It sounds to me like a trumpet.
  • Memory Lane
    • Good loop/melody/beat.
  • One Love
    • This song actually has an easy-to-follow concept: someone writing a series of letters to their very-close friend / partner-in-crime in prison.
    • I think the first verse of this song may be my favorite verse of the album.
    • I think this may be my favorite song on the album, despite it not having the most 'fun' / catchy beat / melody / sample.
  • One Time 4 Your Mind
    • I can't say what this song is supposed to be about.
  • Represent
    • This has a good loop/melody/beat. I immediately recognized it; this may be the most popular song on the album.
    • The concept is somewhat easy to understand: it's about his behavior in his hood.
  • It Ain't Hard To Tell
    • This has one of the better loops/melodies on the album.
    • He somewhat-weirdly combines a downplayed/quiet sample of the most-memorable portion of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" with another very-prominent "DA-da-da-da-da" sample.
    • Can't say what the concept of this song is beyond "I'm a good rapper", and I had to reread the lyrics to be sure of that much.