Jay-Z might be getting a little old for the rap game. The HOV recently dropped his 11th album, The Blueprint 3, which rocketed to the top of the charts based on his name alone. But songs on his newest effort are heavily lacking in that fire Jay-Z is known for and are hardly a blueprint for anything but lukewarm lyrics and trite beats.
Jay-Z unhealthily relies on more cheaply-produced, pop-centered hooks and his line-up of heavy hitters including Pharrell, Kanye West, Alicia Keys and his young prodigy Rihanna. Frankly, they all appear to be just taking up space during the songs in between Jay-Z’s mundane, shallow lyrics. Frankly he sounds bored and tired of himself, as if he were "phoning it in," so to speak.
“Empire State of Mind,” his tribute to New York, features a version of Alicia Keys that’s so watered down, it’s almost impossible to tell it’s her at all. The generic piano chords over a flat drum beat are about as uninspiring as the lame hook poor Keys chose to sing. Jay-Z tosses in references of his favorite haunts, but obviously the bright lights didn’t inspire him too much. There’s no real story, and at times the lyrics don’t even make sense. This little gem is a favorite of mine, “Lights is blinding, girls need blinders, so they can step out of bounds quick, the side lines is blind with casualties, who sipping life casually, then gradually become worse.” Meaning? The world may never know, but it’s just one of many moments where either senility of laziness may have set in.
“Venus vs. Mars” is probably Jay-Z’s “boudoir song”. He speaks of the differences between himself and a woman and how they compliment each other. The concept of the track could have been quite amazing if done right. But again, Jay-Z falls short with this one too, using too many out of date cheesy references (we're all over Britney shaving her head) and a rather skanky chorus. The music itself is supposed to be a sassy little number with a quiet synth beat, and low bass notes using several keyboard settings. The over-riding compliment to the bass should have been more of a Barry White guitar riff, but ended up being an over-synthetic "guitar" sound that turns into a horrible MIDI version of what should have been. It’s Jay-Z trying too hard to sound like the younger chart toppers, but it all makes him sound geriatric.
However, Jay-Z does bring back the fire from his youthful days during “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)”, the saving grace of the whole album. He takes us back with and old-school blues guitar riff, wailing trumpets and clarinet harmonized with an organ and backed up by a smooth, driving beat. His rhymes on this track are some of the most clever and powerful on the whole album. And the best aspect about "D.O.A." is that it doesn’t sound as studio polished or over-organized like all the other songs on the album. It’s a purer, rawer version of HOV, the real Jay-Z.
Unfortunately, the first song to top the charts and hit the clubs running is “Run This Town” with Rihanna and the over-opinionated Kanye West. In between Rihanna sounding like a yodeler with a sinus infection and Kanye’s horrid lyrics that babble on forever about a girl's giant backside (is that really all that man knows how to talk about?), the lack of real talent and depth is almost insulting. Plus, it sits next to “D.O.A.” on the album, which only makes it sound worse. It appears that this song was just made to sell singles and almost seems like a move of desperation for Jay-Z.
In an ever-changing genre with young up and comers ready to take your place at any moment, Jay-Z has to be feeling the heat. He even raps in “D.O.A.”, “I know we facin’ a recession, but the music ya’ll makin’ gonna make it the great depression” showing he is well aware of the flash-in-the-pan hits that can bump him down on the charts. But Jay-Z needs to take his own advice here. Compared to The Black Album, The Blueprint 3 sounds like a demo tape gone wrong – save “D.O.A.”, of course.
The rest of The Blueprint 3 finds Jay-Z throwing a few half-hearted stones at Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, and he sounds less ambitious than Pharrell, and does a rendition of Alphaville’s “Forever Young” with Mr. Hudson that would make Napoleon Dynamite give up a slow dance.
All in all, The Blueprint III is less about Jay-Z making a comeback and more about Jay-Z trying to keep up with the new young go-geters of today's Hip-Hop game. And the extremely high expectations for this album made for a pretty spectacular let down.
Jay-Z - Live at the Chicago House of Blues - September 8, 2009 - Run This Town & D.O.A. (Courtesy of Fakeshoredrive.com)
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPuMpCS8D54
By Britni Day \ comments
Three reasons to see Pinback at Bottom Lounge tonight:
1. Right now you need some very catchy, simplistic post-modern rock from a band like Pinback and you don't even know it yet. You know that song you hear, immediately involuntarily start moving your head to and realize that with this song you've hit a level of musical zen you never thought possible? Pinback wrote all those songs.
2. One of the most precious songs ever written by them with a fantastic super-groovy bass line is about a goldfish named "Penelope."
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMccGgs02Ak
3. Because it's Tuesday night, and you've just got to dance!
8:00 PM. Tuesday, Nov. 3. Bottom Lounge. 18+. $18. By Britni Day \ comments
Los Angeles and Chicago’s dreamy hybrid-child, 
