When
Jay-Z
first made a series out of his best album, 2001's
The Blueprint
, it became a game of high expectations. The
Blueprint
of the first volume was
as vital as he'd ever been, storming back to the hardcore after a few years of commercial success.
The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse
was a complete turn, a set of half-cocked crossovers, bloated to bursting with guest features that obscured his talents.
The Blueprint 3
is somewhere between the two, closer to the vitality and energy of the original but not without the crossover bids and guest features of the latter (albeit much better this time).
Kanye West
is in the producer's chair for seven tracks, and it's clear he was reaching for the same energy level as the original
(which he produced).
"What We Talkin' About"
begins the album with a wave of surging, oppressive synth, while
enumerates (with an intriguing lack of detail) what he's said and what's been said about him, ending with a nod not to the past but the future (and
Barack Obama
).
West
also produced the second,
"Thank You,"
and while it starts with typical
Jay-Hova
brio, the last verse piles on the unrelenting criticism of unnamed rappers doomed to weak sales. There's plenty more lyrical violence to come, but most of the targets are much safer than they were eight years earlier. (
Jay
doesn't sound very convincing when he claims in
"D.O.A. [Death of Auto-Tune]"
that it's not "politically correct" to rail against one of the most reviled trends in pop music during the 2000s.) From there, he branches out with a calculating type of finesse, drawing in certain demographics via a roster of guests, from
Young Jeezy
(hardcore) to
Drake
(teens) to
Kid Cudi
(the backpacker crowd). The king of the crossovers here is
"Empire State of Mind,"
a New York flag-waver with plenty of landmark name-dropping that turns into a great anthem with help on the chorus from
Alicia Keys
.
isn't a one-man tour de force like the first.
is upstaged once or twice by his guests, and while the productions are stellar throughout --
Timbaland
appears three times, and
No I.D.
gets multiple credits also -- it's clear there's less on
's mind this time. Not tuned out like on
Kingdom Come
, but more content with his dominance as a rap godfather in 2009. ~ John Bush