Back with another classic album review and another one from Jay Z. The first Jay Z one I did was his '96 classic Reasonable Doubt. But now we fast-forward to the early 2000's to 2001. I was interested in this one because the game had definitely changed complexion since the mid 90's, so I was interested to see how Jay Z has developed.
As is the case with a lot of the albums in this "Classic Album" series, The Blueprint is another album that I am guilty of not ever hearing, even though I probably should have.
I absolutely loved Reasonable Doubt, so my expectations were sky-high. The first thing I noticed was how Jay Z's penmanship has definitely matured. Literally no lyric was spared, everything was so clean and developed. His story-telling was now more vivid (Girls, Girls, Girls), his ability to write compelling hooks was present and his overall flow, delivery and technical elements were all really tight. There was nothing to shout about too much in that respect though, it was all just very good. There were a couple of standout moments, but I will talk about them in a bit.
Beats were pretty bad-boy as well. Heart of the City (Ain't no Love) felt like a full band were playing that instrumental, really authentic and full which helped to give it that anthem feeling that I took away from it. Similar to the instrumental on The Ruler's Back too, they both gave the album that New York stamp, especially The Ruler's Back, which was a great opener and an amazing way of asserting himself once again on the rap game. The drums on Lyrical Exercise were filthy. The song is a concept song with loads of metaphors between rap and being in the gym, so as a motivational song it is one of the best ones I've heard. The tempo was brilliant and Jay Z's delivery and breath control really emphasised the idea that this was a song to work out to or just gas you up. But yeah, the drums pumping through my headphones was the main reason I fell in love with this song.
Next I'll talk about Takeover. This had everything you want in a diss track. It was clever, hard and it completely just broke the soul down of Nas and Mobb Deep. My favourite part was when he was breaking down Nas' discography and really made you question Nas' legacy, which is crazy as Nas is a God MC in his own right. - "Four albums in the last 10 years Ni**a, I could divide, That's one every let's say 2... 2 of them shit's was doo, one was 'Nah' the other was Illmatic, that's a one-hot-album-every-10-year-average". Absolutely fair play to Nas for even being able to come back from this with a diss track that I think is better with Ether.
Just like Takeover, I cannot talk about this album without mentioning Renegade. One of the most widely debated songs of all time. This was clash of the titans. Both rappers, Jay Z and Eminem providing some of their best verses of their career. But like Nas pointed out on Ether - "Eminem murdered you on your own shit", Eminem definitely took the W. This is no slant on Jay though, this was 2001, Eminem was in his prime and basically no one could spit as good as Em could, I'd say Jay never really stood a chance, but in fairness Jay's verse was cold as fuck.
Jay's flow was impeccable flow and gritty, vivid lyricism was intense, my favourite Jay line from Renegade is probably "I had to hustle, back to the wall ashy knuckles, pockets filled with a lotta lint, not a cent, gotta vent, lotta innocent live lost on the project bench, what you hollerin', gotta pay rent, bring dollars in".
That was amazing, but Em came with that liquid flow and the way he kept that "shoe fits I'll wear it" rhyme scheme throughout nearly all the first verse was brilliant. The beat he produced was like a movie as well. My favourite Em line from Renegade is probably "See I'm a poet to some, a regular modern day Shakespeare, Jesus Christ, the King of these latter-day Saints here, to shatter the picture in which of that as they paint me as, a monger of hate, satanist, scatter-brained atheist, but that ain't the case, see it's a matter of taste, we as a people decide if Shady's bad as they say he is".
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| One of the illest pictures in Hip Hop History |
The only song I didn't care for was Girls, Girls, Girls, the hook really started to grate on me. However, the part 2 of that song I thought was excellent. A couple of songs were less memorable and didn't have those lyrical highlights that some of the other's had. Although this album is class, I don't think it is as good as Reasonable Doubt, so Reasonable Doubt remains as my favourite Jay Z album thus far.
Overall, tight lyricism, impressive production and nice hooks make this album a really good project. Very listenable and a lot to take away and it really gave a good show for Jay Z and how skilled and dominant he was with his music. Definitely a classic in my opinion and will be one I will return to on the regular.
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