12/29/2023 0 Comments Jay z blueprint 2 original![]() The Neptunes shine on "Excuse Me Miss," but the track still seems a bit outside Jay's sonic realm. Hell, he probably could have sold several mill of that. In retrospect, Jay probably should have released an entire album of soft jams called Jay-Z Sings For The Ladies or something like that. I've personally got not problem with artists branching out, but it does seem a bit of a left hook when somebody who has always watched the streets watching him dip into the silky soul. While his voice fits the laid back beats to a "T," it further shows him to be a closet pop pro hiding under the guise of a street wise hustler. Both "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" and "Excuse Me" have Jigga getting into his between the sheet mood, delivering some ditties for the ladies in a smoothed out post millennial soul vibe. The result is a dark, paranoic posse cut. ![]() The track teams Jigga up with the undisputed god of rhyme, Rakim. Dr Dre lends some strange spy film madness on the eerie "The Watcher 2". Having heard what Blaze and Jigga can do together, this track seems like a throwaway. The album continues with the synth driven mish mash as Just Blaze drops keyboard flushes that sound like a kid fiddling around with a Casio in his bedroom. My Favorite Track Off The Blueprint 2 Is: It might have had more impact had Jay and company used some unreleased Biggie rhymes. While the tune is meant as a heartfelt tribute to Big, it rings with a sheen of cheese, especially when the lyrics from "Juicy" are dropped in as if they were a guest shot from beyond the grave. ![]() Kanye West favors melodramatic faux symphonic piano interspersed with flowering female gospel soul vocals courtesy of Faith Evans. The bulk of The Blueprint 2 utilizes slick, synth driven grooves, moving further away from the classic grit and grim funk and erratic electro clash vibes that saturated rap during it's Golden Years. Jay might have better been served to have just have culled together the best 8 tracks from each disc and instead released a 16 track album broken into two segments (much like Ice Cube did with Death Certificate). Disc one was labeled The Gift, while disc two was deemed The Curse. Granted, the "concept" behind The Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse was to delve into the two sides of Jay-Z's fame. There have been very few rap double albums, Biggie's Life After Death, being the main one to come to mind. Historically, double albums have been best served as concept albums, mostly within the rock genre (The Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia, Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Pink Floyd's The Wall). But a double album requires the listener to devout a sufficient amount of time into the listening experience. The medium has always been a heavily verbal one, reliant on the interaction of clever wordplay and simplistic rhythm accompaniment. Hell, a double album is a risky proposition for any genre of music, but even more so for rap. Folks barely had the chance to digest the original Blueprint before Jay hit them with not one, but two new discs of music. The Blueprint 2 suffers a bit because of this. Let's face it, even the most gifted and prolific artist can hit a dry patch, which is more likely to happen if they keep cranking out album after album without taking a break. There are pros and cons to both practices, but Jay's, while more profitable in the short and long run, also leaves more room for creative blow-out. Nas is an artist who adheres to the Old School practice of releasing an album every 2 years, while Jay is a product of the modern pop, stay-in-the-people's eyes, minds, and faces ideology of releasing an album every year without fail. ![]() Those lines, intended as a supreme dis toward Nas, actually illustrate the two divergent philosophies when it comes to recording and releasing albums.
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