“When I made ‘Illmatic,’ I was trying to make the perfect album,” he said. “It comes from them days of ‘Wildstyle.’ 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, smelt like, all in that album,” he continued. “I tried to capture it like no one else could.”