So that made “Dear Summer,” his solo song on Memphis Bleek’s album 534, particularly resonant when it dropped. In 2005, two years had passed since Jay-Z released what many believed was his swan song with The Black Album. Where the first verse sees Jay reflecting on his daughter’s birth, the second speaks to some of Jay’s trials growing up, including those with his father: “ Your Grandpop died of ni**a failure/Then he died of liver failure/Deep down he was a good man.” “The City is Mine” Feat. “ False alarms and false starts/All made better by the sound of your heart.”īut it’s the song’s 2nd verse that genuinely cements this as one of Jay’s most underrated. The feelings of a new father seep through lines like “ Your mama said that you danced for her/Did you wiggle your hands for her?” and deeply personal bars around previous miscarriages suffered by Jay and B. At the time of its release, Rolling Stone called the record “rushed,” but a more accurate description of the song is “pure.” Featuring the first sounds of his newborn daughter, the Neptunes-produced track is one of Jay’s most-open lyrically on wax.
In the music blog era, the drop of “Glory,” Jay-Z’s tribute to the birth of his daughter, was a huge moment. “International Hov, I told you so/ 40/40s out in Tokyo/ Singapore, all this from singing songs” “30 Something” – Kingdom Come (2006) As Hov says on the song, any time Emory called him while inside he just wanted to hear Jay “ talk fly” and Hov does just that on the song’s 2nd verse: The song was said to have been critical in keeping Emory’s spirits up while serving his sentence. It wasn’t always this good, however, and Jay’s Do U Wanna Ride from his Kingdom Come album was a letter to his incarcerated friend, even beginning with a recording of a call Emory made to Jay while locked up. Now a successful executive at Roc Nation and entrepreneur with his ‘ Bet on Yourself‘ Puma collaboration, Emory has turned his life around. But like a good friend, Jay never abandoned Emory, ultimately helping secure his early release with a job offer at Rocawear. Album DescriptionAs the story has been told, Jay-Z’s close friend Emory “Vegas” Jones was sentenced to 16 years in prison, missing Jay’s meteoric rise to the top of the entertainment world. See More Your browser does not support the audio element. Not tuned out like on Kingdom Come, but more content with his dominance as a rap godfather in 2009. gets multiple credits also - it's clear there's less on Jay's mind this time. Jay is upstaged once or twice by his guests, and while the productions are stellar throughout - Timbaland appears three times, and No I.D. The Blueprint 3 isn't a one-man tour de force like the first. The king of the crossovers here is "Empire State of Mind," a New York flag-waver with plenty of landmark name-dropping that turns into a great anthem with help on the chorus from Alicia Keys. " that it's not "politically correct" to rail against one of the most reviled trends in pop music during the 2000s.) From there, he branches out with a calculating type of finesse, drawing in certain demographics via a roster of guests, from Young Jeezy (hardcore) to Drake (teens) to Kid Cudi (the backpacker crowd). (Jay doesn't sound very convincing when he claims in "D.O.A.
There's plenty more lyrical violence to come, but most of the targets are much safer than they were eight years earlier. West also produced the second, "Thank You," and while it starts with typical Jay-Hova brio, the last verse piles on the unrelenting criticism of unnamed rappers doomed to weak sales. "What We Talkin' About" begins the album with a wave of surging, oppressive synth, while Jay-Z enumerates (with an intriguing lack of detail) what he's said and what's been said about him, ending with a nod not to the past but the future (and Barack Obama).
Kanye West is in the producer's chair for seven tracks, and it's clear he was reaching for the same energy level as the original Blueprint (which he produced). The Blueprint 3 is somewhere between the two, closer to the vitality and energy of the original but not without the crossover bids and guest features of the latter (albeit much better this time). The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse was a complete turn, a set of half-cocked crossovers, bloated to bursting with guest features that obscured his talents. The Blueprint of the first volume was Jay-Z as vital as he'd ever been, storming back to the hardcore after a few years of commercial success.
JAY Z ALBUMS WITH BONUS TRACKS SERIES
When Jay-Z first made a series out of his best album, 2001's The Blueprint, it became a game of high expectations.
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