From the category archives:
Kingdom Come is at the bottom of my Jay-Z discography list, but “Beach Chair” has Jay in his introspective/self-reflective mold.
The gem can be found in verse one: “I got demons in my past/ So i got daughters on the way/ If the prophecy’s correct/ Then the child should have to pay/ For the sins of a father/ So I barter my tomorrows/Against my yesterdays/ In hopes that she’ll be OK“
Dope.
Lyrics (OHHLA) and Youtube after the cut.
For the past 10 days, we have been celebrating Jay-Z’s discography and the release of his latest effort, Blueprint 3. We have concentrated heavily on his best work; however, as a Jay stan I realize that Hov is not perfect. He definitely has had his share of WTF moments. So with that said, let’s countdown his Top 10 worst songs…
Jay and B.I.G. recorded three songs together (Biggie Duets and “A Dream” don’t count). On “Brooklyn’s Finest” B.I.G. shined bright. On “I Love the Dough” B.I.G. was masterful again with Jay keeping pace. On “Young G’s,” Jay’s verse that included lines such as: “Some say I been here before because of the way I zone/Some said, Jigga zone is like the fallin of Rome/Reoccuring, that he thinks like that cause he’s observing/Won’t be known until I’m gone and niggaz study my bones” was a notch above B.I.G.’s drugs and guns verse.
B.I.G. still leads 2 to 1 tho… Who you got?
Hit the cut for the stream/download and poll.
One of the most beautiful blends in 95-96 was created in the world famous D&D studios. Now known as HeadQCourterz, where the infamous DJ Premier creates his Works of (M)art, the studio in New York once held sessions between a young emcee, Sean Carter, and the aforementioned producer, while both were in their prime. The combination was scary. We saw marvelous joints on Reasonable Doubt turn into undoubted hip hop classics, but we also saw a few tracks throughout Jay-z’s discography get blessed with a Chris Martin beat. Here we are, on 11 Days of Jay and on DJ Premier Wednesdays breaking down and ranking every DJ Premier and Jay-z collaboration.
Keepin’ with the our Eleven Days of Jay theme and given that it’s Premier Wednesday, we bring you this gem right here that was released on vinyl… so u know what to do, hit it after the jump… enjoy!!!
Here are the video’s for my least favorite Jay-Z album. Its not that this is a “bad” album I just thought it was sequenced wrong (all Just Blaze tracks within the first 15 minutes of album) and the inclusion of the terrible “Hollywood” and “Anything” didn’t sit well with me.
Anyhoo, I would have loved to seen a video for “I Made It.”
Everything after the cut.
Kingdom Come is the ninth studio album from Jay-Z released on November 21, 2006. This is considered a “comeback album” for the established rapper as 2003’s The Black Album was slated to be his final release. The album was a big commercial success, selling about 680,000 copies in its first week, making it Jay-Z’s highest selling album within a one-week period, although the album received mixed reviews.
Kingdom Come was the first Jay-Z album released since 2003’s The Black Album, which had been widely hyped as Jay-Z’s “retirement” album. The video for that album’s hit single “99 Problems” had ended with Jay-Z going down in a hail of gunfire. Jay-Z stated in interviews that that scene represented the “death” of Jay-Z and the “rebirth” of Shawn Carter. Because of this, Jay-Z had originally planned to release Kingdom Come under the name of Shawn Carter, but decided in the end to release it under his more-famous stage name. Jay-Z’s second single, “Lost One” (produced by Dr. Dre) addresses Jay’s split with Roc-A-Fella co-founder Damon Dash, the death of his nephew, and supposedly his relationship with actress Rosario Dawson.
A fan of Hip-Hop I am. I grew up on that Boom Bap. That New York Hip-Hop. Jay and Raekwon are New York Hip-Hop. Great picture.
Props to YN for the flick.
Another dope mixtape featuring Mr. S. Carter. If you are a Jay-Z fan…you have this already. If not grab it after the cut.
The Black Album was the one that started it all… remixing a whole album, that is. Yeah, there are probably more American Gangster remix albums out there, but there are some classic Black Album remixes. I mean, who could forget the controversy over DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, where he remixed Hov over beats sampled from The Beatles? Other noteworthy producers made a name for themselves with their Black Album remixes, including Kev Brown, Illmind, Kno (of Cunninlynguists), and 9th Wonder. In addition, a few veteran producers took a jab at it as well, such as Pete Rock, MF DOOM, and RJD2. These are, in my opinion, the best of the Black Album remixes. Hit the jump to check these out…
Thomas has been doing a great job of holding down our lyrics posts this past week. With The Black Album being one of my favorite Jay albums, I had to help out today. One of my favorite cuts on the album is the Kanye-produced “Encore.” The whole song just gets me really hyped, from Kanye’s beat to Jay’s lyrics. I had a hard time choosing between the first and second verses as my fav and ultimately went with the first… “Who you know fresher than Hov? Riddle me that.”
Hit the jump for the rest…
Jay’s “retirement” album produced four video’s that included the flossy “Change Clothes” to the gritty black & white Rick Rubin produced banger “99 Problems.”
Everything under the hood…
The Black Album is the eighth studio album from Jay-Z, released November 14, 2003 on Roc-A-Fella Records. It was promoted as his final studio album, although Jay-Z subsequently announced a return to solo recording in 2006. The album was very well received by critics and was also a commercial success, debuting at #1 with nearly 463,000 copies sold in its first week and over 3 million to date. The black disc is accompanied by a black-covered set of liner notes and a black jewel case.
The album features only two guest appearance> One by Pharrell (in “Change Clothes”) and the other by Jay-Z’s mother, who speaks about his childhood in different portions of “December 4th”.
In early interviews, Jay-Z said that the album would be a return to his Reasonable Doubt sound (responding to criticism from some fans that his subsequent efforts were too commercial) and that it would be “for the streets”, with no promotion or singles; however “Change Clothes” and “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” were both successful singles.
He also claimed that the album would have a different producer for each track, and early magazine advertisements listed a series of numbers (representing tracks) and a producer for each number. The final album did feature a variety in producers, although Roc-A-Fella producers Kanye West and Just Blaze produced two tracks each, in addition to the two produced by frequent Jay-Z collaborators The Neptunes. Longtime collaborators DJ Premier and Dr. Dre did not produce any tracks. 9th Wonder saw a boost in popularity after producing “Threat” for the album. Jay-Z is credited as the second producer on the track for finding the R. Kelly sample that was included in the beat.
There’s a huge list of songs to go through when making any sort of list for Jay-z. While I tried my hardest to narrow down my version of Hov’s Top 25 songs, after reading Fred’s list, I felt he left out joints that are not only vital to Jay’s identity, but essential to understanding the great multi-persona rapper, as well as Sean Carter. With that said, here it is, not necessarily a better list, but another list for ya’ll to chew on.
Jay-Z is one of the rare MC’s to drop multiple classic albums. It’s even rarer that he drops them during different eras in hip-hop. His 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt came during the end of hip-hop’s Golden Era from the mid-80s until the mid-90s. Backed by Kanye West and Just Blaze, his soul-influenced 2001 album The Blueprint created a dynamic shift in production style and arguably led to the death of the “bling-bling era.” Two years later, he was ready to call it quits with The Black Album, which would have been up there with Scarface’s Emeritus as textbook examples on how to make a final album had Jay-Z stayed retired.
With almost 20 years in the game, Jay-Z has a wealth of jams that cannot be contained in a Top 25 list. Much like Kevin Nottingham and Michael Jordan, you can’t stop them, you can only try to contain them.
