Jay-Z: "The Black Album" (Review)

Since seismically altering hip hop with his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z has established himself as arguably the most prolific and consistent hitmaker in the history of the genre. Over an eight-year career that has produced no less than eleven albums’ worth of material, no artist has been more responsible for ushering rap from its origins in b-boy iconoclasm into the roughneck cosmopolitanism of today more than the artist occasionally known as Jigga, J-Hova, Hov, Iceberg Slim… you get the picture. Whatever the alias, he’s the voice of his generation, and now, upon the release of The Black Album, Jay-Z has suddenly announced that he’s retiring. And who knows if we should believe him; rappers have certainly retired and un-retired before, as have writers, athletes, politicians, and just about everyone else, and if you’re wary of the suggestion that Jay-Z—clearly a music addict to top all others—might really just pack it all in at the drop of a dime, feel free to abstain from drinking the Kool-Aid.

But on the off-chance that The Black Album really is Jay-Z’s ride into the sunset on those iced-out rims of his Bentley, he’s certainly gone out on top, because The Black Album is a terrific record, a 14-track tour-de-force that’s surely one of the best of his career. It’s also a stirring return to form after the double-album meanderings of last year’s Blueprint²: The Gift And The Curse. Lyrically he’s never been sharper, and while Jay-Z’s rhymes have always had a deep soul that belies his icy hustler persona, The Black Album actually finds him more political than ever before. “Rehabilitated, man, I still feel hatred/ I’m young, black and rich/ so they wanna strip me naked,” he spits on “Threat,” and over the course of the record takes digs at everyone from George W. Bush to Bill O’Reilly. And the hits will keep on coming, rest assured: while you’ll undoubtedly spend the next 6 months hearing “Change Clothes” pour out of neighborhood SUVs, you’ll also be better for it, as the Neptunes slap a pretty, airy hook over a infectiously danceable beat and Jigga himself has never sounded better. The ferociously clever “99 Problems” features a hard-rock beat from Rick Rubin (complete with Mountain sample), and the Eminem-produced “Moment of Clarity” sounds suspiciously like something out of “8 Mile” but nonetheless coaxes one of Jay’s best performances on the record. Sure, The Black Album falls slightly short of the explosive nihilism of Reasonable Doubt and the clobbering virtuosity of 2001’s The Blueprint, but really, what doesn’t? If this really is the end of Jay-Z then it’s a nothing less than a goddamn shame. He’s the best there is, and has been for eight years: we should be so lucky that he continue to remind us.

Originally published in Block, December 2003