The Jay album…!
How to start this post…not sure. I’m such a big Jay fan, huge…so I am ultra critical of this album. First things to clear out, the Neptunes & Swizz tracks are terrible – should have left them off. Now that we have that out of the way, I can honestly say I really like this album. It needs to be listened to in an entirely different context than any of his other works – and actually, different than any other rap album ever made. He’s mature now, his life is worlds different than when Reasonable Doubt came out, or even Volume 2 – so the content and feel of the album is of course going to reflect this. This is truly business-rap…warm-up music for the boardroom. Me vs. venture capital firms type music…ha, seriously. The tracks: (1) I dig ‘Prelude’, the beat, Mr. Pain-in-da-ass’ intro, all of it. (2) Just Blaze does some amazing work for ‘Oh my God.’ Something to shift gears to, good stuff. (3) Wish they wouldn’t have leaked this, I love it, but would have had more impact off a first-listen within the album. Another classic driving track. (4) Closing down roads in Monaco to race Ferraris and Zondas?! A zillion miles from reality – nuts. (5) ‘Lost Ones’ – finally a little inside glimpse from the man himself, very interesting and very good. (6) Wow, pretty amazing track, and John Legend fits perfect. We love to hear Jay talk fly – he lets us live vicariously through him on tracks like this. Inspirational (7) The opening line of this song is pretty much all you need to hear, ‘you don’t have enough stamps in your passport.’ But yeah, this is the maturity here – real chill track. (8) The classic this-one-is-for-my-mother track – good stuff. (9) Terrible, seriously. After ‘Change Clothes’ and ‘Frontin’ this is all we get? (10) ‘Hollywood’ is good stuff – Jay-Z talks quite a bit about fame in this album, how its the most addictive drug. Beyonce and Jay blend so well on this track. (11) Ehh…not too into this track. Doesn’t even really sound like a Dre beat. Good lyrical content though. (12) What is this?! Not a good look, shouldn’t be on the album. (13) An intense track indeed – didn’t actually expect this from Jay. Very good, not too much more can be said – although its interesting to hear Jay kind of apologize for just giving money and not time. (14) Another ‘wow’ track – a great way to close it out. My favorite line off the whole album: ‘…sunset hov, how you get so fly? I said from not being afraid to fall out the sky…’ So yeah, a thanks goes out to Jay for another album to get inspired from. He is truly a living legend.