10 Albums Where Hip Hop Got Real

Every single amazing hip hop album in the early '90s seemed to be coming out of the West Coast. While the rest of the decade saw both the East and West Coast throwing their beef at each other for childish reasons, you couldn't argue the pain in every one of these bars, with emcees telling you what it's like to grow up on the wrong side of the tracks. Other rappers may have wanted to scare you to death behind the mic, but Nas was looking at his rhymes like poetry throughout Illmatic.

Across every song on this record, you're practically dropped into the heart of New York City, where Nas talks about how hard it is just to stay alive in the city of sin, never wanting to sleep because he knows that sleep is the cousin of death. Although there's not much in terms of laid back songs on here, the jazzy textures underneath songs like The World Is Yours help take the edge off a little bit, as Nas spits bars about just how much he's had to see for a kid getting out of his teen years.

While Nas never was able to recapture the lyrical mastery behind Illmatic, it was never about making a masterpiece in the first place. It was about painting a picture of New York as he saw it, and whenever you hear songs like Represent, you can practically feel the chill in the air and immediately put your guard up.