I like you already, so no pressure

The original members of the Harlem Globetrotters (then the Savoy Big Five) with the team’s founder and coach Abe Saperstein.

On January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team travels 48 miles west from Chicago to play their first game in Hinckley, Illinois.

The Globetrotters were the creation of Abe Saperstein of Chicago, who took over coaching duties for a team of African-American players originally known as the Savoy Big Five (after the famous Chicago ballroom where they played their early games). At a time when only whites were allowed to play on professional basketball teams, Saperstein decided to promote his new team’s racial makeup by naming them after Harlem, the famous African-American neighborhood of New York City.

The son of a tailor, Saperstein sewed their red, white and blue uniforms (emblazoned with the words “New York”) himself. The lineup in that first game, for which the Globetrotters were paid $75, was Walter “Toots” Wright, Byron “Fat” Long, Willis “Kid” Oliver, Andy Washington and Al “Runt” Pullins.

Russell Simmons passed on Nas' demo, famously claiming that Nas sounded too much like G Rap. translation: great but unsalable. He signed Warren G instead. Illmatic dropped, and is widely regarded as the greatest rap album ever made.

Illmatic was the bridge. Melle Mel and Kurtis Blow, to Run-DMC, to Rakim, the Juice Crew, and Big Daddy Kane. now Nas. everyone said he had next since Large Professor brought the chipped tooth kid sporting Gazelles into the studio.

The more you listen to Illmatic, the more haunted it feels. when you're younger, it clubs you with its hail of words and the skeletal beauty of its beats. but the older I get, the more it strikes me as a teenaged requiem for those still living. "Old Soul" is the sort of stock phrase used by yoga teachers and amateur psychics, but it always fit Nas. he's 20 and prematurely nostalgic, struck by memories of park jams and watching "CHiPS.", when Shante dissed the real Roxanne, and how much he misses Mr. Magic.

Illmatic is a story of a gifted writer born into squalor, trying to claw his way out of the projects. It's somewhere between The Basketball Diaries and Native Son, but Jim Carroll and Richard Wright couldn't rap like Nas. not many can.