Having sat on my hard drive now for almost 6 months it’s probably good that these compendium follow up pieces see the light of day. This (the Jay-Z stuff) was approximately 3 years in the making, starting at the end of ’22 and following me through a move, an engagement, and a promotion. Jay’s own life had also his tumult, Diddy was arrested and then (basically) acquitted of his monstrous behavior while Shawn Carter was sued in the crossfire. That case seems to have been dropped, it would’ve been surprising if anything stuck in the first place, he’s a very judicious billionaire who has long understood how his actions will be interpreted by the outside realm. As skill I wouldn’t think is so far from his past as a drug dealer.
I won’t bother with a biography or any deep dives into his personal life, most of what I need to say is in the criticism and anything supplemental exists on Wiki or any of the several biographies written about the man.
Jay-Z – Reasonable Doubt [Roc-A-Fella Records 1996]
Shawn Carter’s first LP is revered by aficionados for only one reason no matter how much they’ll debate the particulars: it’s his only project that wasn’t consciously attempting to capitalize on his mic skills (this is also known colloquially as “selling out”). No major hit single, no branding outside of his record label, hell he didn’t even have a deal with a phone company yet. Instead a mid-level crack dealer from Bed-Stuy who pushed in Trenton and Maryland put out a distilled song cycle about a day in the life of one that’s equal parts smarm and heartbreak, especially the rueful vivid noir of “D’evils”. Not to mention his rhymes, just on the outset is the “beamin’-schemin’-steamin’-meanin’- intervening-machinin’” combo of a lifetime. And he epitomized the mafisio movement taking place in the East Coast Renaissance where over a Nas sample he recounts: “Three shots, close range, never touched me, divine intervention/Can’t stop I, from drinkin’ Mai-Tai’s, with Ty-Ty”. Life threatening danger, God, braggadocio, lavish lifestyle, the man just can’t stop. 4.5/5
Jay-Z – In My Lifetime, Vol 1. [Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam 1997]
He likes jokes, he’s charismatic, he’s dangerous, he’s got bars, he’s got friends, he’s loose, he’s unfocused as he attempts to imbue hip-hop with capitalism. 3.8/5
Jay-Z – Vol 2. Hard Knock Life [Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam 1998]
The funk is funkier and his gangsta posturing is getting even more explicit, it’s not just Carlito’s Way referenced now, a whole scene from Goodfellas is bitten off after one of the more enjoyable odes to money, power, and women, though he’d never use such dignified terms. I’d say that Shawn Carter was getting arrogant with his Annie flex but he keeps backing it up with charisma and rhyming ability. I think the other thing worth noting about this trilogy post Reasonable Doubt is the producers (DJ Premier, Swizz Beatz, Timbaland) all on their way toward canonization and the features speaking to a particular era of bygone hip-hop. In the midst of its transformation from commercial music to commercialized culture such names as Jermaine Dupri, Foxy Brown, Memphis Bleek, and DMX had a momentum around them that made them seem like they could really change things. And yet, and yet, and yet, time somehow got away. 3.9/5
Jay Z – Vol. 3…Life and Times of S. Carter [Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam 1999]
If his rapping’s gotten better it’s only marginally, where he improves is concepts and hooks. Which is what you’d want to do if you were already elevated like him but still wanted to stay commercially relevant, make your shit a bit smarter and much catchier. The streets at the time lambasted him for going commercial and a mere 3 years after his debut they weren’t wrong, it’s just that he’d won the war over it. Jay-Z The Brand was now shelling out hip hop as another form of content to be consumed with little thought to its deeper cultural history and gaining a different type of credibility, artist as ambassador instead of crack dealer. The Mariah Carey and UGK songs are most likely to ingrain themselves on grey matter, but it’s his prosecutor-defendant roleplay in “Dope Man” that asserts his greatest point. No matter what legal controversy comes his way Shawn Carter will always be known for using his network to push his sound for clout. All while during a stabbing trial. Ballsy. 4.2/5
Jay-Z – The Blueprint [Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella 2001]
The legacy of these 13 tracks has more to do with their producers these days than any of the bars that Hova lays down outside of the Nas diss that Mr. Escobar promptly took to heart and led him to almost ruin Jay’s career in a response diss merely 3 months later. Curiously you’ll note that Just Blaze has more soul samples than Kanye does, even if Kanye did make “Heart of the City”. Jay’s greatest skill here is sustaining, he’s not saying anything he hasn’t already said, he’s the renegade, the king of New York, he likes women but doesn’t treat them decently, he mourns for the struggles of his past that all of his money can fix now. One of the greats? Undoubtedly. But his best trick is that he makes his puns and tales sound so easy to do. $120 million in 6 years is a lot of weight to shoulder. 4.3/5
Jay-Z – The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse [Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella 2002]
The bling era at the height of its power and bloat. 3.3/5
Jay-Z – The Black Album [Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella 2003]
A “farewell” record where Shawn Carter finds himself like his hero Scorsese on Raging Bull, throwing every bit of energy and talent he had into what was billed as his final work. Had he actually retired afterward he’d have to settle for being one of the greatest rappers of all time instead of simply being a billionaire titan of industry whose mere presence can generate money. He was already an emblem of what money could buy, lush beats and samples from the most idiosyncratic names in the biz – looking at the production list it’s like all of hip hop from 1986-2003 distilled for the founder of Roc-a-Fella to speak his legacy over with a luxuriousness that predicts the sound of rap to come. Retirement or no, by now it’s recognized as the third in a trifecta of magnum opuses he made along with Reasonable Doubt’s guilt-driven crack-pushing nihilist and The Blueprint’s stake-your-claim soulscape that became vital post-9/11, AND the end of a career arc that many would describe as his golden era. In a genre that at-the-time was primarily occupied by Black Americans who grew up under Reagan, what better way to top off than showing you can put your money where your mouth is? 4.5/5
Jay-Z – Kingdom Come [Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella 2006]
To be honest I can see where some of the backlash came from, no less than two samples are deployed long after greater songs wrung them out to better effect (that’s the “Super Freak” one and the “Darkest Light” one). But the advice on investment, respecting a partner’s professional boundaries, and general victory lapping for being in your mid-thirties? Jay-Z has been an elder statesman in rap too long for this to phase me almost two decades later, a role he damn near invented since rappers at the time didn’t stay relevant into their forties. That being said, the production that’s somehow too plush and too static shows that buying the best beats only goes so far on the road of lost subject matter. 3.7/5
Jay-Z – American Gangster [Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella 2007]
His fans and music writers having deemed his grown-up album wack the ostensibly cold businessman takes a notably sensitive step back and puts out some 58 minutes of the gangster fetishism that got him notoriety in the 90’s. “That’s a brand name, I stand behind it, I guarantee it” says Denzel just in case you the listener needed it hit over your head. So while some may cheer “return to form” I actually don’t think Shawn Carter’s latest picks up until the second half due to a series of serious missteps. I mean who starts off an album named American Gangster with Idris Elba? There’s a whole ass Key & Peele skit about this. “Pray”? Okay so someone’s business management team wants to give the masses their opiates. “American Dreamin’”? Snooze. “Hello Brooklyn 2.0”? Skip. Next; boring. Next; half baked. Next; lukewarm. Next; Oh what’s that, Pharell finally puts some life in the man? Next; roleplay done properly. Next; Now you’re really saying the quiet part out loud Hova. Next; There. He. IS. Next; two rivals can agree that money is balling. Next; An actual fall from heights track that’s both an earworm and sinister. Next; Encore 1. Next; Encore 2. 3.7/5
Jay-Z – The Blueprint 3 [Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella 2009]
Shawn Carter’s real skillset is the way that he’s able to convert cultural clout into hundreds of millions of dollars. Starting off as a crack dealer who rapped for a decade and some change about money and its uses through a masculine posture where even if he’s the villain he’s always the winner and even if he’s down he’s never sad or vulnerable in any way that invites empathy or comment except from the boys and emotionally stunted men that love him; give him some credit, he makes this mildly overproduced half assed attempt at a torch passing sound and look real good. To explain the joke, “The Blueprint” is a statement of not just purpose but one of social Genesis – a cultural reset as the kids say. As his last album where he truly was capable of number one hits he thankfully leaves his weaker allies at home and brings in his big guns on both sides of the mic while serving as a springboard for those three youngsters who by now have audiences as big as him (but not nearly the money). So, yes, he sets a social starting point considering what “Empire State of Mind” did and the next decade of rap sounded like. Though he finds himself still in the middle of shedding that old skin he tries on Kanye’s schtick (“Haters”) and tries to give out congratulations (“A Star is Born”) with all the grace of a boy on the dancefloor of his bar mitzvah, it’s worth noting that he never sounds anything less than confident. Earworms, too. 4.0/5
Jay-Z – Magna Carta Holy Grail [Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella 2013]
The whole thing might not be awkward, bloated, and uninteresting but a lot of it is, “Tom Ford” could’ve been a Lonely Island parody of a Jay-Z song only then the man made it himself. Somehow Timbaland, whose bounce in some way shape or form is all over 90% of the beats, remains experimental and forward thinking well past his 2000’s peak only to get washed production-wise by his homie Pharrell and Hit-Boy’s Kanye ripoff that I’m sure Jay got for much cheaper than he would’ve from the real thing. We find the Master of Ceremonies himself straddling the odd line of being an experimental artist whose fortune and newly established fatherhood seems to manifest as a form of anxiety driven PTSD from his previous life as a poor kid in Bed-Stuy coming up in the crack trade. The product is so scattershot though that it seems like his business ventures and new child probably distracted him, which makes it more human in the long run. But because they’re so on his mind, he manages to stitch together genuinely impressive statements on the tension between his rich life and the frustrations that slavery/settler colonialism/cultural appropriation/cultural reclamation create that his new hero Basquiat made comment on some 30 years ago, and his own refreshing vulnerability as a new father in the shadow of his own father’s lack of an example. All around though is the dull “more more more” of the Obama-era. 3.4/5
JAY-Z 4:44 [Roc-a-fella/Def Jam 2017]
In what by now we can probably expect to be the mogul and titan’s last solo studio album he’s more focused because he actually has something to say and knows if he fumbles it it’ll cost him big. But it’s not an apology, at least not exclusively one. Whatever his many infidelities, thoughts on investing, or the state of hip hop Shawn Carter is undergoing two rites of passage at once; a coming of age and a midlife crisis. The former is most obvious in his many criticisms of himself, the latter is in his clear need to pass on his wisdom to younger types who could use it. As part of his elder statesman status he keeps his song lengths and rhymes tight, jettisons the luxurious + experimental hi-fi bumps of his last decade that signified his wealth explicitly, and instead employs NoID’s lo-fi Black History sampling beats to present a contemplative proto-Kanye canvas for Shawn Carter to paint Jay Z The Billionaire on the outs with himself and his family eating soul food for comfort – which makes sense, his flow is built for it and he’s one of the few who can afford the clearance for royalties. Capital is close to political power in this country, though in principal it’s a cynical or naive person who thinks it’s the end-all be-all. 4.3/5
Cosmic Hero 