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Jay-Z: The Blueprint [PA]
(Roc-A-Fella Records)
Released 09/11/2001
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Jay-Z's The Blueprint is the type of hip-hop recording that just doesn't get made anymore. It has nothing to prove. It just smashes through the doors and plays the Big Daddy. And there is none bigger at the moment.
It's taken the rapper six albums (in an amazing five years) to drop the crack-dealing manual and get cozy with his talent. Way back when, Run-D.M.C. told us it was tricky to rock a rhyme that's right on time. LL Cool J told us he'd crush 'em like a jellybean. Their confidence made their records rock. But theirs was a much more innocent time, before hip-hop entrepreneurs brought their boutique labels into the majors and the music became a multibillion-dollar business seeping with resentment and violence.
In the world of The Blueprint, black is beautiful: "I'm representin' for the seat where Rosa Parks sat," Jay-Z says on "The Ruler's Back." The album strives to legitimize itself by using '70s soul hooks from Bobby "Blue" Bland ("Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)" utilizes Bland's "Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City"), Bobby Glenn ("Song Cry" samples "Sounds Like a Love Song") and others to build an almost surreal mix of styles. The album throws down all pretense and gives the other rappers in the neighborhood the verbal body slam — Nas gets especially tough treatment on "Takeover" ("Went from Nasty Nas to Esco's trash/ Had a spark when you started/ But now you're just garbage." Ouch. Mama said knock him out).
The Blueprint wants to party, and get crazy doing so, as evidenced by "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" (RealAudio excerpt), which states, Dogg-y style, "H to the Izzo, V to Izzay!" Why's this guy getting mush-mouthed over his Jayhovah nickname? Who cares? "Girls, Girls, Girls" (RealAudio excerpt) is another wonderful throwback. It takes the strings and moaning from Tom Brock's "I Love You More and More Every Time" and twists them into the funniest song of the year, as an all-star chorus of Q-Tip, Slick Rick and Biz Markie does its best to fracture the loopy, loungy refrain ("Girls, girls, girls, girls, girls I do adore" — adore becoming a three-syllable word). The song has the potential to become another "Funky Cold Medina" or an "I Need Love," enough to survive in high-school cafeterias for years. Credit the album's most prominent producers, Kanye West and Just Blaze, for creating such a time warp. Their diggin'-in-the-crates sampling gives the album a refreshing cheesiness. Only the requisite exotic Timbaland track, "Hola Hovito" (RealAudio excerpt), and "Renegade," a dark collaboration with Eminem, disrupt the jukebox aesthetic.
The Blueprint is not a perfect album. Some of the material is undoubtedly filler. But this recording makes it clear that hip-hop is supposed to be fun — and that Jay-Z is having a ball.
Christopher O'Connor
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10:53 AM (EST)
"Ruler's Back, The"
