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SJU TOPS G'TOWN!

St. John's Beats Georgetown In OT
Staff and Wire Reports | The Hartford Courant
March 4, 2009
St. John's erased a 15-point deficit in the last 10 minutes of regulation and went on to a 59-56 overtime victory over Georgetown Tuesday night in New York.

Rob Thomas made four free throws in the final 51 seconds of regulation to tie the score at 51 and force the first overtime in the 91-game series between the schools.

D.J. Kennedy hit two free throws with 1:15 left in overtime to give the Red Storm (15-15, 6-11 Big East) the lead for good at 57-56. After a turnover by the Hoyas, Justin Burrell dunked on a rebound with 10 seconds left to make it 59-56.

The Hoyas' DaJuan Summers missed a three-point shot at the buzzer...

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ILLMATIC: 15 Years Later

They called him prophet. Poetry was a part of him. And on Tuesday, April 19, 1994, when 20-year-old Nasir Jones released Illmatic, his debut album on Sony Music’s Columbia Records, true-believer hip-hop heads rejoiced. It felt like revelation.

The journey began three years earlier, with Main Source’s 1991 posse cut “Live at the Barbeque.” On it, the rap world was introduced to an upstart MC from Long Island City’s Queensbridge Houses. Queensbridge, the largest housing project in the U.S., was home to Marley Marl, MC Shan and the mighty Juice Crew, who’d fallen to the Bronx’s Boogie Down Productions in the famous “Bridge Wars” of the late ’80s. The son of jazz trumpeter Olu Dara, Nas was discovered by Main Source’s Large Professor—and was still in his teens when he stole the “Barbeque” single with lines like, “Verbal assassin/My architect pleases/When I was 12/I went to hell for snuffin’ Jesus!”

New York streets were buzzing heavy. 3rd Bass rapper MC Serch signed Nas to his Serchlite Publishing and started shopping for a record deal. Not all of the industry’s honchos were as enthused (Russell Simmons, for example, at Serch’s own label, Def Jam Recordings, turned him down for fear of commercial failure). But Sony Music A&R Faith Newman-Orbach eventually signed Nas to Columbia Records.

With an all-star team of New York beatmakers abetting Large Professor’s production, work began on hip-hop’s perfect album. Nas’s first recorded solo track, “Halftime,” appeared on the soundtrack to the 1992 indie flick Zebrahead, whetting fans’ appetites for what was to come. In the years leading up to the album’s release, overzealous DJs began liberating unguarded tracks via mixtapes and the college-radio circuit. In the face of such early bootlegging, Columbia rushed a short, 10-song Illmatic to stores in ’94—nixing original plans to include more material.

New York purists and the rap press raved, but Russell was right: The album was not a huge commercial success, selling a mere 330,000 copies its first year out. Its cultural impact, though, has proved to be immeasurable, marking Nas’s messiah-like arrival and the beginning of a nine-album, multimillion-selling career. A decade and a half after its release, XXL assembles the people who were there to bear witness.
—ROB MARKMAN
XXL Magazine

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