Jay-Z’s new record The Blueprint 3 debuted at #1 on the Billboard chart this week. It sold 475,000 copies, which is impressive since supposedly no one buys music anymore. More significantly, the new album is Jay-Z 11th record to hit #1, which means he has passed Elvis Presley as the solo artist with the most #1 albums. Only The Beatles (who re-released 13 albums this week) are ahead of him - way ahead, with 19 #1's.
While I am not a huge hip-hop fan, and Elvis will always be the King, I have been listening to a bit of Jay-Z here and there lately and I like what I've heard. For one thing, he sings with a real voice of authority and intelligence in a way that reminds me of Chuck D from Public Enemy, and even John Lennon.
The former Shawn Carter is also interested and knowledgeable about music far beyond hip-hop. For example, in 1998 he brilliantly recast the Annie song “Hard Knock Life” into a Ghetto Anthem. I'm not really into all the talk about bling and Cristal and liberal use of the N-Word, but I grew up in Connecticut:
More recently, Mr. Beyonce teamed up with surprisingly good guitarist John Mayer for a pretty hot version of his new song "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)" at a 9/11 victims' all-star benefit show Jay-Z organized this month at Madison Square Garden. Any rapper who hates auto-tune (technology that allows bad singers to sing in tune) and plays with a full band is alright by me.
Like lot of white rock geek dudes, my first exposure to Jay Z was 2004's The Grey Album, the reputation making mash-up by Danger Mouse. He brillianly (and illegally) took accapella versions of Jay Z’s tracks from 2003's Black Album and put them over samples taken from The Beatles' 1968 White Album. While at first I found it sacrilleigious, it eventually grew on me. At one point there were rumors of a commercial release, but the Beatles estate put the kabosh on that. It's too bad, because it would be a better way to take their music to the next generation than the multi-hundred-dollar Rock Band game that just came out. Anyway, you can probably find The Grey Album online if you look around (I did). And you can hear clips of it on YouTube. Someone out there made a really cool mashup video as well for the Glass-Oniony track "Encore," incorporating Jay-Z into footage from A Hard Day's Night.
And here's a charming homeboy-made video for a Rocky-Racoony Grey Album track called "Justify my Thug":
Man, I completely agree on that.
ReplyDeleteThere's just way too many fools out there that can't just get it.
In fact, I was arguing with my sort of friend sean yesterday about this, and
they wouldn't admit to me that he was wrong. Now I can just show them this blog :)