It Was Written: 25th Anniversary of a Mafioso Rap Classic
Photo of a CD by Nick M.W
By Nick M.W.
This article originally appeared on Medium.com (7/2/2021).The genesis of Esco.
I once made the argument that hip-hop’s G.O.A.T MC is Jay-Z (my personal favorite MC is André 3000). Of course, it’s a matter of opinion. A lot of hip-hop heads will disagree; they have different criteria to measure greatness. Some heads might at least concede that there’s a thin margin between a few MC’s who can claim G.O.A.T. status if the criteria were based on impact and lyrical skill. By these measures, I could make the case that Kool G Rap is the greatest MC of all-time.
How?
Listen to his music and recognize that he’s a gifted storyteller whose skills on the mic are unquestionable. Read up on hip-hop history, and you’ll learn that G Rap’s style influenced many of the same rappers who could be put up against him as challengers to for G.O.A.T status. If Kool G Rap is the father to Biggie, Nas, and Jay-Z’s style — the Holy Trinity of NYC hardcore rap — is it unreasonable to say that he’s the greatest MC of all-time?
This point is important to consider because I’m here to celebrate the 25th birthday of Nas’s It Was Written. G Rap was the pioneer Mafioso rap and an inspiration for Nas. During the mid-90s, Mafioso rap had a short-lived renaissance in which Nas released a classic offering to the subgenre. Raekwon’s Only Built for Cuban Linx sparked a fire that burned for a couple of years, until The Firm album doused it. It Was Written dropped in the middle of this fervor, between Doe or Die and Life After Death. It’s an album that seems to divide hip-hop heads and Nas fans. Some consider this follow up to Illmatic a classic on par with Nas’s debut. Others stand by their opinion that It Was Written marked the beginning of Nas’s multiple album slide to mediocrity. Personally, this is my favorite Nas album because, like other music I’ve written about, this album takes me back to some specific moments spent with my friends during my teenage years. We often argued about whether this was better than Illmatic or not, and whether Nas was the best MC in the game. It’s a bias from which I cannot separate myself, but beyond the personal relationship I had with this album, I just like the way it sounds more than Illmatic. Both are classics in their own right, but the exaggerated Mafia theatrics of Nas’s lyrics and the cinematic beats that accompanied them coalesced at the same time Mafioso rap was peaking to form one of the all-time great hip-hop albums.
Photo by Mika V.
The quick history of It Was Written is that while Illmatic was a critically acclaimed instant classic, it wasn’t a commercial success. No surprise there given that album’s production style. It wasn’t made to appeal to the masses; it was written to speak to the real heads. The beats and lyrics were crafted for hardcore hip-hop fans, and they deliver to showcase a new jack prodigy on the mic, but Nas wanted his next effort to have more crossover appeal. He brought on hit-makers Trackmasters (Poke and Tone), who previously had their hands in bangers from Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, and Biggie (among others), and who were on their way to producing for a literal hip-hop heavyweight, Shaquille O’Neal. They produced several tracks on the album, including its three singles: “The Message,” “Street Dreams,” and “If I Ruled the World.” Nas also worked with DJ Premier, Havoc from Mobb Deep, L.E.S., Live Squad, and some unknown producer named Dr. Dre on this album. They all came through for Nas, who did his thing with intricate story-telling and a bit of creativity with his lyrical content (“I Gave You Power” stands alone in terms of a song told from the perspective of a gun). The distinction between whether Illmatic is better than It Was Written is razor thin.
What makes Illmatic superior to It Was Written is its authenticity and its influence. It Was Written may have caught the wave of Mafioso rap in the mid-90s, but Illmatic started the resurgence of East Coast hardcore rap when West Coast G-funk was dominating radio and MTV. There’s something more powerful about the way Illmatic sets its stories against the bitter cold of surviving in the projects versus the way gangsta rap highlighted the violent struggles of its narrators against the sunshine, palm trees, and chronic smoke coming out of California. Others followed Nas, inspired by the way that he did it. Whether or not peers, like Biggie and Jay-Z, were directly influenced by this work, they had to have heard Illmatic and gleaned some knowledge and inspiration from it.
Illmatic was the depiction of Nas’s adolescence living in the Queensbridge projects. The raw lyrics carry the authenticity of that lived experience, and the decidedly minimal, soulful production adds atmosphere to the street aesthetic. This album is the first and last of its kind from Nas because he left Queensbridge behind (as he should) and decided to make more commercial albums. He’s a billionaire now, so it all worked out. He’s earned the success, but, like Jay-Z with Reasonable Doubt, there’s no recreating the authenticity of the experience once it’s no longer a part of your life.
What makes It Was Written better than Illmatic is the larger scope of the former’s concept. Illmatic is a documentary that puts you on the grimey streets of Queens with the narrator. It Was Written glamorizes the lifestyle of running those same streets, inserting Mafioso fantasy tales of all the money, power, and respect that a don commands. Establishing a character and detailing the world in which he lived is a more impressive creative feat. Nas lived Illmatic, and his cinematic re-telling of that life is an undisputed classic. But, Nas became someone else, Escobar, for It Was Written. Like Al Pacino embodies Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Nas is Esco on that album. We watch his rise through the streets to power and witness the cost he pays to become Señor Escobar, and he still manages to kick the old soul street knowledge. It’s not an introspective recollection of a life he once lived as much as it is an in-the-moment account of what he’s doing.
It Was Written also succeeded in launching Nas into the next level of his career, where his videos were played on MTV and his singles dominated hip-hop/R&B radio stations. “If I Ruled the World” made him a crossover star, and he starred in Belly with DMX. It Was Written had everything to do with the success that Nas experienced in the closing years of the 90s. As excellent from start to finish as Illmatic, Nas wasn’t going to become the type of star he aspired to be making more music like that. The debut is a masterpiece, but It Was Written was his springboard to the upper echelon of fame.
The album is full of bangers, but here are my three favorite tracks:
Photo sourced from LA Times via Getty Images
“Take it in Blood”
A pure gem of a track, and one of a couple in which Nas’s lyrics stands toe-to-toe with anything that comes off Illmatic. That’s not a controversial statement. Live Squad, Lo Ground & Top General Sounds crafted a dreamy beat with an ominous bass line that allows Nas to flex the cross-section of where his street philosopher persona meets Nas Escobar. The producers took slowed down samples of the sultry Fantastic Four lament on “Mixed Up Moods and Attitudes” and Kool Keith’s vocals from Ultramagnetic MC’s “Ease Back”. Nas rides this beat with the same kind of energy and lyrical dexterity he brought to “N.Y. State of Mind”.
From the top, Nas steps to the mic and brings the heat, but kicks it with the nonchalant flair of a made man telling stories to the hungry cugines.
I never brag how real I keep it, cause it’s the best secret
I rock a vest prestigious, Cuban link flooded Jesus
In a Lex watching Kathie Lee and Regis
My actions are one with the seasons
A Tec squeezing executioner, wintertime I rock a fur
Mega popular center of attraction
Climaxing my bitches, they be laughing
They high from sniffing coke off a twenty-cent Andrew Jackson
City lights spark a New York night
Rossi and Martini sipping, Sergio Tacchini flipping mad pies
Low price, I blow dice and throw them
45 by my scrotum, manifest the Do or Die slogan
My niggas roll in ten M3's
Twenty Gods popping wheelies on Kawasaki’s
Hip hop’s got me on some ol’, spraying shots like a drum roll
Blanking out and never miscount the shells my gun hold
I don’t stunt, I regulate
Henny and Sprite, I separate, watching crab niggas marinate
I’m all about tecs and good jooks and sex
Israelite books, holding government names from Ness
MC’s are crawling out every hole in the slum
You be aight like blood money in a pimp’s cum
“Affirmative Action”
This debut of the ill-fated supergroup, The Firm, gave fans a taste of what could have been. Trackmasters made a beat that sounds like it was lifted from Scarface. Wasn’t this playing in the background when Tony Montana goes to meet Sosa in Bolivia? For real, this track is the epitome of mafioso rap from the production to the lyrics, and it’s a pretty damn good posse cut, too.
Nas steps in with the penultimate verse, 12 bars, spitting hot fiya!
Yo, my mind is seein’ through your design like blind fury
I shine jewelry sippin’ on crushed grapes, we lust papes
And push cakes inside the casket at Just Wake
It’s sickenin’, he just finished biddin’ upstate
And now the projects, is talkin’ that somebody gotta die shit
It’s logic, as long as it’s nobody that’s in my clique
My man Smoke, know how to expand coke and Mr. Coffee
Feds cost me two mill’ to get the system off me
Life’s a bitch, but God forbid, the bitch divorce me
I’ll be flooded with ice so hellfire can’t scorch me
Cuban cigars meeting Foxy at the Mosque
Movin’ cars, your top papi Señor Escobar
“The Setup”
Nas is one of the best storytellers in rap, and “The Setup” is a fine example of his skill at weaving street narratives. One of the reasons that I like It Was Written more than Illmatic (that I didn’t already mention) is the production. The beats on this album knock. Havoc brings his unique beat-making and deep bass lines to “The Setup”. Combined with Nas’s lyrics, they create a tension that’s necessary to the subject matter of the track. Each line builds on the uncertainty of whether or not Nas and Havoc will pull off the intricate murder/robbery setup or fall victim to being setup by their co-conspirators.
Nas shifts into a different gear on the second verse when the story moves into the second and third act of the story.
Hold it right there pull over/
That nigga right there inside the Rover/
I knew he’d be right here, I told you/
Let’s get him now, look at him smile, ice Bulova
Polo pullover, big links and rocking boulders/
He’s stunting, after he left my man like that/
Without a fair chance to fight back, but I’ll be right back/
He never seen us, Sos’ gave the mac to Venu/s
And Vicious, lookin delicious, handle yo’ bidness/
And step to him, shake your ass try to screw him/
Do what ya gotta do to get to him/
A tight parasuco, with young faces/
Can turn niggas Buttafuco, of all ages, they was amused/
By the way they walked, way they talked/
Only if they knew these girls’d spray New York/
If they had to, heard him ask Venus, could I have you/
He jumped out a Jeep, heard her tell him don’t grab boo/
They started chatting, was only bout a minute, flat when/
They jumped in the back of the Jeep laughing/
We followed them pollying, he thought the hoes were Somalian/
Probably wanted to hit the Holiday Inn/
I grabbed the phone and called the Mobb and them/
We layed low about a hour or so these bitches movin too slow/
We both holding, what if them wild hoes started folding/
Sosa, said say no more, we started rolling/
Before we got in they must have shot him, security wildin/
There the girls go, hurry up we out in/
The 940, me Sosa and two shorties/
The punk niggas got murdered in the orgy
“A tight parasuco, with young faces, can turn a nigga Buttafuco, of all ages,” might be one of the lines on an album packed with them.
I want to acknowledge the other songs that didn’t make the cut. It was tough deciding between “Affirmative Action” and “Shootouts” because I dig the way Nas attacks “Shootouts” with two vivid tales of different scenarios in Queens. This is first-class storytelling in hip-hop.
I also like “Nas is Coming” and “Live Nigga Rap,” but those two tracks just don’t quite have the juice that the ones I ended up rolling with have. “The Message,” “Street Dreams,” and “I Gave You Power” are three solid hitters that stack the front of the album’s lineup, but they just whet your appetite for the entrée that comes later.
This might be another one of my unpopular opinions, but I think “If I Ruled the World” makes the album weaker. It doesn’t seem to fit its tone. It’s not gritty enough, and it’s too upbeat for an album that devotes a lot of lyrical content to killing, fucking, and selling drugs.
It Was Written, and pretty much every other album Nas has put out after Illmatic, have the unfortunate circumstance of living in the shadow of that groundbreaking debut. I imagine every rapper or musician trying to make it big would want their first crack at it to be critically loved and highly respected, but how many would prefer to make a bag instead of a masterpiece? To accomplish both often requires the artist to be at the top of their game and to capture or create the zeitgeist of the era. It Was Written didn’t have the cultural impact of Illmatic, but it sits perfectly within the movement that was East Coast Mafioso rap of the mid-90’s, giving listeners the same type of guilty pleasure escapism on record that Scorsese delivers on screen.
Respect for putting the lyrics in the liner notes. Photo of them by Nick M.W.
