Nas: Time Is Illmatic

Directed by One9, this documentary examines the making of Nas's 1994 debut album Illmatic and the conditions that produced it. It opened the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, timed to the album's twentieth anniversary week, and after the screening Nas took the stage and performed the record in full. At its center is Queensbridge, the largest public housing development in North America. Nas dropped out in the eighth grade and signed with a major label at twenty, and the film features his father, a jazz musician, and his brother. His closest friend, Ill Will, was killed in 1992, in an incident in which his brother was shot in the leg, and that death was a direct trigger for the album. In the film's most discussed moment, his brother looks at one of the album's photographs and observes that nearly everyone in it besides Nas is dead or in prison. Alongside the album's producers, DJ Premier, Large Professor, Pete Rock and Q-Tip, the documentary features Pharrell, Alicia Keys and the scholar Cornel West. It holds ninety eight percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Who it's for: Anyone interested in hip hop history and in where a single album actually comes from. Who it's not for: Not for viewers wanting Nas's full career, since the film stays fixed on one record and the neighborhood that made it.