From the category archives:
Well, we’ve come to an end of our Eleven Days of Jay… some hated it, most loved it. It was great to be able to dedicate the site to my all time favorite emcee, although exhausting at times to get all the posts going while staying on top of hip hop current events.
If you’re just finding the site or you missed a day, hit the jump for a quick recap…
This last little while, Jay-Z has been the talk of the town. A town of music that he runs laps around, an industry he has by the throat, a genre he has at bay. However, Jay-Z the musician gets overlooked many times. If not for the talent he possess, then for the talent he has shown in the past, even in some of his darkest moments. Whether it was on a soundtrack, an unreleased single, a 12’’, someone else’s album, or even on his album, Jay rarely had material that was infamously slept on. The dude’s whole life is documented and praised, so why wouldn’t his music be?
Keezy from The Real Frequency fam concluded that we should take on the challenge and design a “Most Slept On Jay-Z” list. Being the list maker that I am, I had to take him up on that offer. We’ve each compiled a list of 15 songs. Which one do you roll with? More importantly, what are we missing? What on the list isn’t slept on? What concludes being slept on?
For our lists, it was a mixed bag of unreleased tracks, joints people just simply don’t appreciate enough, or songs that don’t get spins (that probably should). We came to our own conclusions of what Slept On meant. Enjoy it for what it is.
Deezy. Vs. Keezy.
Last one! I have only listened to BP3 a couple of times since Tuesday. I didn’t listen to the album when it leaked on purpose…so I’m behind everyone else.
“A Star Is Born” is one of the better tracks on the album and has Jay giving props to many of his peers in the rap game (I don’t think he is dissin 50 tho). The second verse seems appropriate because of his mention of Rae, the purple tape, and Wu-Tang.
Hit the cut for the lyrics (courtesy of CD booklet and stream).
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Today’s the last day of Eleven Days of Jay so looka here, looka here..when we go hard, we go hard! These Blueprint 3 Instrumentals are not official, by the way. They are homemade loops, but are really pretty decent. You know what to do.. hit it after the jump.
As Kev said a few days ago we didn’t compile any Jay-Z compilations because of the massive 11 Disc set call Library of A Legend. As I was looking through those 11 disc there are a few tracks missing or should I say not included. This comp is only eight tracks deep, but every Jay-Z fan should have these.
For no reason we’ve had these tracks sitting in the que since November 2008.
Hit the cut for the tracklist and link.
It wouldn’t be right for us to have a Jay-Z week without some samples. Between us, Ivan, Goon, and YN all of Jay’s albums have received the sample treatment. These are loose samples from some unreleased songs, soundtrack cuts, and songs Jay has been featurned on. A couple of dope tracks on here…see “Hogan’s Thing.”
Hit the cut for the tracklist and link.
As the “Eleven Days of Jay” keeps rolling along, this mix right here is by the world famous DJ Ayres (of the Rub), some may agree or disagree with the title of the mix but it bangz. Hit it after the jump and enjoy!!!
If The Black Album was the birth of the full album remix, than American Gangster was certainly the death of it. It’s not that there were so many bad remixes (though there were some), but that there were so many! HipHopDX actually had a contest for the best AG remix album (congrats to Remot). But, I can actually thank the American Gangster remixes for the successful start of this site. It was back then (starting in December 2007), that this site was slowly getting its start. We covered every single remix album that we could find… or I should say “I” as it was just me back then. Before the AG remixes we had maybe 100 people visit the site daily. Within a few months of posting AG remixes, we shot to around 3,000 daily. Now, we have close to 20,000 people visiting the site daily… but who’s counting. To this day, I still get people sending me their American Gangster remix albums… really!
Anyway, some of these remixes were so good that I put together two volumes of my favorite remixes. You can grab those after the cut, as well as go back in our archives and reminisce on some of the good and bad ones. If you have a fav or did one that we never posted, feel free to leave a link in the comments.
Our last Who Spit for Jay week.
“Eminem killed you on your own sh*t.” Nas spit that famous line on “Ether” as an answer record to Jay’s “Takeover.” So the question is did Eminem kill Jay on his on ish? Was Royce’s original verse better than Jay’s?
Ok…we decide today. From my understand “Renegade” was originally a track Em and Royce record under the name of Bad Meets Evil. No sure why Eminem kept the track and gave it to Jay. If I remember correctly around this time Em/D-12 and Royce were “beefin” so this may have contributed to Em giving the song to Jay.
This was originally an Em track and he owned it from day one. Royce wasn’t able to keep up with Em neither was Jay. Jay’ wasn’t “killed” on this song…his verse is super dope. Any other emcee he wins. On this track with Em…no so.
Em>Jay>Royce.
Who you got?
How are the follwers enjoying the “Eleven Days of Jay”? It’s bangin’ ain’t it, this sumthin’ that the hip-hop blogs and sites never seen… 11 days dedicated to one artist. Man don’t you like how the “Coach” aka Kevin Nottingham thinks? Well here’s a hot mixtape done by the homiez Urban Noize out of the M-I-A-YO (Miami, Fla). Hit it after the jump and enjoy!!!
Jay finishes off his 10th album with this banger by Just Blaze. Verse two is where he shines. Jay has a knack for ending his albums with great songs: RD (“Regrets”), Vol. 1 (“You Must Love Me”), The Dynasty (“Where Have You Been”), The Black Album (“1st Song”).
Lyrics (OHHLA) and YouTube video after the cut.
Wassup people… for Throwback Thursday we gonna hit cha with a double dose of The Best of Jay-Z Pt. 1 & 2 by DJ Mister Cee. Thanks to the homies over on The Diggers Union for the hook up on these 2 classic mixtapes. Hit em both after the jump!!!
The visual to Jay’s American Gangster. I thought all of these video’s were cool. A video for “Success” and/or “Party Life” would have been dope…but who am I?
Everything after the jump!
American Gangster is the tenth studio album from Jay-Z, released November 6, 2007 on Roc-A-Fella Records. American Gangster is Jay-Z’s first concept album, which was inspired by the film of the same name. The album features production from Diddy & The Hitmen, Just Blaze, and The Neptunes, among others. Guest appearances include Beanie Sigel, Lil Wayne, Pharrell and Nas. Jay-Z also released an a cappella version of the album on the date of his 38th birthday, December 4, 2007, which lead to a mass amount of remix albums flooding the Internet.
Music critics praised American Gangster, and noted that Jay-Z was trying more “complex lyrics”. The album was released to moderate commercial success, despite being pulled from the iTunes Store, selling 425,861 copies in its first week and debuting at number one on the Billboard 200, tying Elvis Presley for the second most number one albums and was certified Platinum by the RIAA. The album received universal acclaim from most music critics, based on an aggregate score of 82/100 from Metacritic. Rolling Stone magazine named American Gangster the third best album of 2007. The album has sold over 2 million copies as of 2009.
We didn’t complete this set, but assisted Alex (Goon) with this one in May 2008. I just wanted to link to the original post, but all of the links are dead. So I upped the set since I wasn’t able to get a hold of Alex (of course I sent an email at the last minute). I added an additional track for “Do You Wanna Ride” that wasn’t included in the OG set. Peep what Goon originally said about the album/set:
“I only started on this a few days ago but thanks to a major assist from Thomas, it’s finito. This is probably Jay’s worst recieved album even though, in my opinion, it’s faaaaaaar better than volume 2 and on par with volume 3 and Blueprint 2, but obviously below his best. Much of the album is played so only about half the tracks use samples, the obvious ones being the “Superfreak” sample on “Kingdom Come” and the “Shaft in Africa” sample on “Show Me…” So Between Kev, Ivan, and I, we’ve done sets for all of Jay’s albums (unless someone is REALLY dying to hear a sample set for “Street’s is Watching”). Hooray for us…or not.” [page]
Hit the cut for link and album information.
