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WHAT IS THE BEST WAY to listen to Jay-Z's new album? Pop Reasonable Doubt back into your CD player and push play. Don't bother dropping the dough for the double CD, because, though it claims to be The Blueprint2: The Gift & The Curse, Jigga's latest is unfortunately all curse. When you've been the best, its hard to stay at the top, but I have to confess, Jay had me fooled: the original Blueprint was the best commercial hip hop had to offer. The one track featuring another artist had some of the best rhymes produced last year courtesy of Eminem. This time around, Jigga features everyone from Biggie to Lenny Kravtiz to new to Rocafella rockers MOP. With 25 tracks, and beats from everyone from Dr. Dre to Timbaland to Just Blaze, the standards for this album could not help but be high. But even if these usually tight producers had been on point, Jay's lyricism, which once brought us such jewels as "Too much west coast dicklicking / too many niggas on mission / doin your best Jay-Z rendition/too many rough motherfuckers, I got my suspicions / that you're just a fish in a pool of sharks nigga, listen" have deteriorated to a Tupac remake where Jay sings out, "But today, I got my thoroughest girl wit me / I'm mashin the gas, she's grabbin the wheel, it's true to the heart / She rides with me-the new Bobby and Whitney / Only time we don't speak is during Sex and the City." To say that Jay got soft is overstating the obvious. But though it might be unfair to hold Jigga to the standard of Reasonable Doubt, the elements that saved The Blueprint from a quick burial in the graveyard of commercial rap do not return for the second time around. In the first place, this double CD spreads the Jiggaman too thin: though several good tracks might bring some faithful fans to defend the album, it would have been a much better idea to gather the few fresh tracks on to one CD. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Jay-Z has finally and fully succumbed to commercial success. The rhyming on The Blueprint2 is downright lazy. Though Jay has never been as good a storyteller as say, Ghostface Killah, his flow was once one of (if not the) tightest. The difference between this album and last year's effort is that though Jay is still talking exclusively about how great he is, he is decidedly less clever. Instead of "I sell ice in the winter / I sell fire in hell / I am hustler baby / I sell water to a well," it's Lenny Kravitz singing "Life is all about Guns and Roses / Bittersweet like friends and foes's / Some get left behind / some get chosen / Just like life, Guns and Roses," with Jay chiming in: "More Guns than Roses / Poses / Visibly shook of the invisible bully / Flowers need water to grow / it gotta rain / in order to experience joy you need pain." Speaking of Lenny Kravitz, it seems like Jigga lets some of his many guests take over his album, and then take it right down into cheesy doom. Though I am not against mixing it up and dropping new kinds of samples, if I wanted to listen to pop radio I would listen to pop radio. "Guns & Roses," the track featuring Lenny's guitar licks, is only one track of several that ought not ever to have been cut, along with the album's single "'03 Bonnie and Clyde," featuring Beyonce, which is eerily similar to Ja-Rule's standard radio rap. From "Some How, Some Way," which features Beanie Sigel and Scarface rapping something or other-I couldn't catch it I skipped ahead so fast-to the last track "A Ballad For The Fallen Soldier," whose chorus and annoying synthesized beats-which should have been Neptunes nasty, but just weren't, mostly because the chorus is so pathetic it makes your teeth grind-there was plenty hip hop could have done without. The guests appearances that are actually good are just that: good when they should be great. "U Don't Know" features quality MOP, but it's a rehash of what was good on the last "Blueprint" and even MOP, which can get anyone going sounds, well, like typical MOP, which always sounds the same. "What They Gonna Do," the track featuring dancehall's nastiest commercial hotshot, Sean Paul, has way too little Sean Paul, (instead of spitting nasty reggae rhymes, it's a Sean Paul sample of him going "yo, yo yo"). The Neptunes, the talented duo whose beats are the backbone of almost every pop song you just can't get out of your head, from Britney to N.O.R.E., haven't given Jay-Z anything on either "Fuck All Nite, N**a Please" or "Excuse Me Miss," but last year's stale sounding production. Even the best songs from this swampy mess are a mixed bag. In "The Bounce," and "2 Many Hoes," though they vaguely recall Missy best stuff, Timbaland does gives Jay at least something to work with. "Hovi Baby," is pretty much classic "get up" Jay-Z and "Diamonds are Forever" is catchy enough that I might listen to it again. "The Blueprint2" and "Some People Hate" are by far the two best back-to-back tracks, and if you can handle the rock 'n' roll rifts in "Meet the Parents," Jay actually tells a pretty decent story in rhyme. All told however, my favorite track might just be the album opener, which is really just Biggie's "Juicy," and that pretty much says it all right there. It's hard to hate so hard on Jay-Z. After all, he is the Jigga man, undeniably one of the best rhymers of all time. However, there are some good tracks buried beneath bad ones-it just shouldn't be so hard to find them. This album sounds rushed, and maybe it was: in an MTV interview Jay said he recorded all 25 tracks in a month. That might explain the almost unexplainable monotony of the album. Another explanation might be the fact that no matter what Jay recorded, either in a month or in a year, was bound to be a commercial success, what with his reputation and fan base-as The Blueprin2: The Gift&The Curse will be. The hunger that produced "Yeah I rhyme sick, I be what you're tryin to do / Made a fortune off / Peru, extradite, china white heron / Nigga please, like short sleeves I bear arms / Stay out my way from here on (CLEAR?) Gone!" is exactly, that: Gone. |
copyright © 2002, The College
Hill Independent
last updated 11 22 02
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