Nas Performs At Beacon Theatre For The 2014 Tribeca Film Festival

The rapper Nas had no shortage of people to thank at the debut of the new documentary about his groundbreaking first album, “Illmatic.”

Especially notable on the list - a certain tough-guy actor.
“I’d like to thank Robert De Niro,” Nas said Wednesday at the Beacon Theater screening - “because he’s always playing me.”

It wasn’t just a good punch line. Like the “Raging Bull” star, Nas has made himself a rough symbol of this city, a signifier of a certain period in New York’s history as well as an icon of an art form.

The doc, titled "Time Is Illmatic," explores all those roles in depth. Directed by multimedia artist One9, the film has enough authority to have made it an apt kickoff Wednesday at the Beacon Theatre for this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. (De Niro himself was a co-founder of the festival in 2002).

To further prove his music’s potency, Nas performed the entire album right after the film unspooled. At 40, he reinhabited a work that he recorded exactly half a lifetime ago. The movie itself plays again Friday and April 25 at the AMC Loews Village 7 before opening in wide release.

Both the film and performance swept the Beacon audience back to the New York of the crack-infested 1980s and the rapidly gentrifying ’90s. More specifically, it whisked us over to the place where Nas grew up — the sprawling Queensbridge Houses, a world of its own on the “wrong” side of the 59th Street Bridge in Long Island City.

It’s here where Nasir Jones realized his greatest fears and found his richest inspiration. The movie splits its time between detailing Nas’ childhood and the creation of 1994’s “Illmatic.” The album brought a new rhythm to rap rhymes, a fresh approach to production sound and a revival of a harder style of hop-hop.

The early part of the film traces Nas’ musical roots to his father, Olu Dara, a jazz player who grew up in the South. Though he split with Nas’ now-deceased mother early on, Dara had a profound effect on the future rapper’s worldview and sonic chops.

He also made a controversial call when he told Nas he should quit school at age 13. The father stands by his advice today. And given his description of the school as, essentially, a waiting room for prison, you can see the reasoning.

Dara was also sensitive to his son’s budding verbal skills, which drew from a deeper history of Queensbridge hip-hop.

In the ’80s, the housing project produced stars from Roxanne Shanté to MC Shan to producer Marley Marl.

But by the early ’90s, the cutting edge of hip-hop had moved from New York to L.A., where gangsta rappers like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac had the most game-changing language, the strongest politics and the hottest grooves.

New York rap evolved in an artier direction, with acts like De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers.

“Illmatic” brought things back to raw rap, with nods to classic New York MCs like Rakim and Big Daddy Kane. While the music incorporated sophisticated jazz influences, it retained a hard edge and a stripped core.

The album drew immediate raves. But it took nearly two years for it to achieve gold status (500,000 sales) — and seven years to hit 1 million sales. Still, it had an impact on other rappers, paving the way for Biggie Smalls’ debut, “Ready To Die,” as well as Jay Z’s first disc, “Reasonable Doubt.”

Though brief — just nine songs and a little over half an hour — “Illmatic” offered an ideal marriage of personal perspective and game-changing sound. Nas made his neighborhood come alive, from the bitter “Life’s a Bitch” to the hopeful “The World Is Yours.”

His worldview took in no more than the few blocks around him, which gave the stories a chilling claustrophobia as well as a clear veracity.

In the movie, and at the show, Nas gave props to the music’s producers, from Large Professor to Pete Rock to Q-Tip. “Illmatic,” in its time, was unusual in using so many different beat-makers on one album, a strategy that’s now the norm.

At the Beacon, Nas performed the songs as a victory lap, a salute to a vanished time whose truth lives on.
“Time Is Illmatic,” Friday at 6 p.m. and April 25 at 4 p.m., AMC Loews Village 7, 66 Third Ave.; (212) 982-2116.

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