It says something that our favorite rap albums this year
came from veterans. Dälek are the new
jacks here, showing up in 1998. Wu-Tang
Clan, Devin the Dude and Pharoahe Monch have been representing since the early
nineties, and Sean Price made a run of it with Heltah Skeltah in the middle of
that decade (which he talks about brilliantly on Jesus Price Supastar’s “Mess
You Made.”) So why, among all these
hip-hop lifers, does Jay-Z still feel like an elder statesman?
Jay-Z’s retirement from rap, after The Black Album, may be easy to mock, and his subsequent comeback may have been totally predictable, but something incredibly important happened in his absence: He got comfortable. When he resurfaced in 2006 with Kingdom Come, he displayed an emotional maturity missing from his earlier work. The Blueprint, for example, while airtight in its production, lyrically screams insecurity—from Jay’s beef with Nas and Mobb Deep, to his assertion that he’ll “Never Change.” Kingdom Come was both underrated and exactly the failure it was said to be, but it was also the first time Jay-Z’s whole self showed up on record; the first time his rap persona became a three-dimensional character; the first time he asked questions rather than making assertions. As Rob Harvilla said in the Village Voice, Jay-Z made good on The Black Album’s threat to rhyme like Common Sense. One of the few times he acknowledges Kingdom Come on American Gangster, he antagonizes us. On “Ignorant Shit,” he says, “I make some thought-provoking shit, y’all question whether he fallen off,” and it’s the perfect description of that misstep. That album provoked thought by honestly depicting the emotional life of the rapper/CEO. But it was still shit.
In contrast to his peers, Jay-Z sounds like a rap dignitary because he sounds fed when other rappers still sound hungry. It’s a complete reversal of what’s usually great about hip-hop, and Jay-Z may be the only rapper in existence that could pull it off. For once, his braggadocio is completely on point—he may be the first rapper to ever sound completely at ease with his life while at the same time, sound compelling as well.
-Martin Brown, 2008
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Posted by: | 2009.10.29 at 23:42