Queensbridge Houses — Nas and Mobb Deep, Queens, New York

The Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, Queens, is the largest public housing development in North America — and the birthplace of some of the most important hip hop in history. Nas (Nasir Jones) grew up in the QB projects and made them the subject of Illmatic (1994), the album consistently ranked as the greatest hip hop record ever made. Mobb Deep (Prodigy and Havoc) also came from Queensbridge, and their album The Infamous (1995) is regarded as the definitive statement of mid-90s New York hardcore rap. MC Shan, Marley Marl, and Roxanne Shanté had put Queensbridge on the hip hop map a decade earlier.

Nas was 20 years old when Illmatic was released, and his descriptions of life in the Queensbridge projects — vivid, literary, simultaneously bleak and beautiful — set a new standard for hip hop storytelling. 'N.Y. State of Mind,' 'The World Is Yours,' 'One Love,' and 'Memory Lane' painted Queensbridge with a novelist's eye and a poet's ear. The album drew on production from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, Large Professor, and LES, each of whom contributed beats that matched the ambition of Nas's writing.

The Queensbridge Houses remain an occupied public housing development, home to thousands of residents. The complex stretches across several blocks between 21st Street and the East River in Long Island City. Queensbridge's contribution to hip hop — from the Bridge Wars of the late 1980s through Illmatic and The Infamous — gives a single housing project a claim to being the most musically significant residential address in hip hop history.