Street Stories

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Maybe death by flesh-eating bacteria isn't the worst way to go. When Nasir Jones was growing up in the projects in New York City, it sometimes seemed to him that his whole world was ill and being eaten away. Drugs were devouring minds, crime was destroying families, poverty was gnawing at souls. Then in May 1992, Jones' brother and best friend were shot on the same night. His brother survived, his friend died, and Jones knew he had to do something with his life. "That was a wake-up call for me," he says.

Two years later, the 20-year-old Jones, who goes by the name Nas, is breaking through as a rapper. His debut album, Illmatic, captures the ailing community he was raised in -- the random gunplay, the whir of police helicopters, the homeboys hanging out on the corner sipping bottles of Hennessy. Despite the harsh subject matter, most of the songs are leisurely paced, with amiable melodies. One track uses part of Michael Jackson's Human Nature as its basic tune. Nas' rapping is dispassionate -- like an anchorman relaying the day's grim news -- but his lyrics sometimes reveal submerged emotion. "So stay civilized, time flies, though incarcerated your mind dies," Nas raps on One Love, a song about writing letters to friends in prison. "I hate it when your moms cries."

Nas isn't a gangsta rapper. He doesn't mean to glorify the rough world he comes from, merely to render it. "I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death," he raps. The shootings two years ago showed Nas that in a violent world you have to stay alert and aware; Illmatic is his wake-up call to his listeners.