Even during an off season, you're guaranteed thrills from the Yankees. With the biggest payroll in sports, New York's finest will always field teams with talent, even if all the position players don't congeal into a world championship team. On the shiny new CD from Jay-Z, a rapper almost universally heralded as the greatest MC of all-time, a lack of urgency keeps the product a significant distance from greatness. There are flashes of brilliance, indeed, most of the biggest names in urban music from the last decade appear on the album, but the record sounds like something put together by a greedy owner: someone assembling pieces without first having a solid idea of where everything goes. The record doesn't have much soul.
Confusion surrounded the album's release, with a leaked copy on the internet pushing the on-sale date from September 11, when Jay-Z released his original, classic Blueprint record, to yesterday, although the new album was only available for download in the U.S. and was never for sale at Canadian record chains like HMV. For a businessman like 39-year-old Shawn Carter, who was Forbes highest-grossing rapper with an estimated earning of US$34-million in 2006, mucking up the release date, where first week sales can determine an album's success, is startling: This is where Jiggaman is supposed to shine. Anyway, the record came out under uncertain terms and maybe this means nothing, but it seems to signify the lack of focus behind the entire project.
Let's get to the tunes. And make no mistake, there are some doozies on The Blueprint III. Empire State of Mind, with a catchy Alica Keys hook, shows Jay-Z flaunting his ownership of New York with clever lyrics and a pulsing, disco-infused beat that should become a massive single when released after D.O.A., Death of Auto-Tune, the record's first single and a good idea if not exactly an honest pronouncement: even without a T-Pain chorus, crazed auto-tuned computer voices pop up all over the album like b-list celebrities at the new Yankee park. Perhaps those songs were recorded after the D.O.A. song. Venus vs. Mars sounds like a reheated LL Cool J track from the 90s until the third verse, where Jay-Z shows why he's "every rapper's favorite rapper," and uses the album's wittiest couplets in describing a relationship gone bad. Talent is never the issue here, hunger is.
Elsewhere, the Swizz Beats song On To the Next One may be too close to Lil Wayne's A Milli, but it's still a super-hot record with the album's most irresistable beat and A Star is Born is an instant classic: Jay-Z's history of the last decade of rap superstars in which he says, "Drake's up next, let's see what he do with it." Lil Wayne was the last rapper Jay-Z anointed, but Jay-Z may have lost a step with age. Run This Town, with the Rihanna chorus and Jesus Walks church choir and verse from Kanye West, is just another example of where the album falters -- not only have we heard this before (and better), but this is The Blueprint III from Jay-Z, where scoring a six out of ten means failure.
"I made the Yankee hat more famous than the Yankees did," raps Jay-Z early on in his album. Let's hope that when he fields his next record, it will have more heart, and more brains.
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