Nas - Illmatic 30 Year Anniversary Tour

In the organizer's words:

After the New Yorker played an exclusive show with the Wu-Tang Clan at Berlin's Wuhlheide in the summer of 2023, appearances are planned this year in Cologne, Berlin, Offenbach, Zurich and Vienna.

NaS - a rapper with depth.

19 April is a special day in hip-hop history: when the then 20-year-old Nasir Jones aka Nas released his debut album "Illmatic" on this day in 1994, a new era in hip-hop began - and, according to the organizer, an exceptional career that would continue to produce new streaming hits in the current decade.

Exactly 30 years later to the day, the NYC legend has announced his upcoming "Illmatic" anniversary tour.

In fact, there has been no getting around this rap artist for three decades: "Illmatic" is the epitome of Nineties and East Coast hip-hop. It also marked the beginning of the "Golden Era" in hip-hop - the starting signal for a career that has produced 17 studio albums to date.

While albums such as "It Was Written", "I Am", "Life Is Good" and the 2021 Grammy Award-winning "King's Disease" (2020) also contain a number of classic tracks, it was ultimately "Illmatic" that all subsequent releases were measured against.

No wonder, because Nas had already established his trademark sound with the first album: his flow was calmer, more controlled, his vocabulary much larger, the complex rhyme structures in part completely redefined - and the depth of the lyrics earned him comparisons with poets such as Langston Hughes.

30 years later, the son of jazz trumpeter Olu Dara, who hails from the Queensbridge ghetto, is busier than ever: after the comparatively quiet past decade, in which Nas only released two longplayers, he has released six studio albums since 2020, three volumes each from the "King's Disease" and "Magic" series.

"Nas is an auteur, and he needs our attention," the US press once wrote about the NYC rapper, for whom artistic vision, credibility and commercial success go hand in hand. The then 51-year-old will return to the beginnings of this exceptional career together with his fans when he celebrates the "Illmatic" anniversary on stage next fall.