Reviews
Is Jay-Z having Self-Esteem Issues? (A BP3 Review)
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Blueprint 3 may get a pass if it is exposed as the product of a mid life crisis, otherwise this is a hypocritical, incongruous, cacophonous piece of ego padding purportedly justified as artistic growth.
Blueprint 3 sports a repetitive rhetoric of self-promotion and egotism. Although hubris is something familiar if not inherent in Hip Hop, these rhymes cross the line from battle rap to the point of such extreme narcissism where I think Jay might have recorded the album whilst masturbating in front of a mirror.
They call him J Hova because the flow is religious (and in 1997 over a Primo beat it was), however the metaphor has become so overblown and overused it comes across as a God-complex. According to the opening track, ‘What We Talking About,” Jay not only runs rap and the map, he is also part of the reason the President is black.
But what is worse than repetition is contradiction. Reminiscence is equally punctuated by the self-proclamation of a new, improved Jay-Z. While bathing in the success of his last ten albums and the significance of his career, he simultaneously preempts a lack of interest in his this latest offering. If you are after some smooth flowing Jay over some soul sampled Just Blaze or decent Kanye beats, take the man’s own advice and if you “want my old shit/ Buy my old album.” Jay seems nervous in his new self-proclaimed image of purported creativity. While persistently telling listeners to “meet me on the next level” he is forced into constant celebration of his first ten albums, which ends up sounding like an attempt at vindication for the most recent offering.
While artistic growth is something to be valued, especially in a genre obsessed with 1996, the albums lyrical and sonical aesthetic is so haphazard and Jay Z’s rhymes so disorganized that it feels like a lack of interest and polish is being disguised as creative development.
The little imagery present comes across as very forced. From the cover, which is about as appealing and genuine as Jay trying to slip into a pair of white skinny-jeans, to the linguistics references to C3PO and Kool Aid, the album feels tired, if not exhausted.
The incongruity of the album is most obvious in its title. The decided lack of imagination that plagues the entire record is immediately apparent in the complete lack of similarities with its 2001 Hip Hop classic namesake. The title Blueprint 3 is only effective in illustrating the full cycle development of his one-time apprentice, from an album where Kanye stamped his name on a genre to an album featuring beats Kanye didn’t want for 808’s and Heartbreak.
The big beat, synth ballads worked for Kanye as there was an underlying conceptual and thematic harmony, that meant 808’s sounded like a complete album. It also worked because he tried to sing. Here the beats clash with the rhymes and Jay sounds like an unnecessary, unwanted extra musician whose amp someone forgot to turn down.
The drum patterns are as inconsistent as Jay’s flow and leaving the lyrical and musical aspects of the album in discord. The absence of snare drums and the prevalence of hand claps and finger snaps is a further complaint.
The whole album is so irrelevant it is disgraceful. For someone who spends an entire album indulging in a personal recollection of their own significance to an genre it is so disheartening to see an artist with the prominence as Jay-Z embrace so many of Hip Hop’s weakest traits. With its chart topping sales Jay-Z passed Elvis into the second spot of most number 1 albums, behind only the Beatles, yet Blueprint 3 has its only moment of intelligent impetus in its exposure of the weakness of contemporary pop music and the ignorance of the masses that buy it.
And as much as the album pretends to be alternative it is also illustrative of Jay Z’s “growth” into a pop artist. You can’t blame the power of fame on Jay but I am sure the purchasing demographic will see teenage girls plugging the Billboard 200 numbers and Run This Town seeing more spins at middle class white weddings than on Bed-Stuy Brownstone stoops. The content is dumb-downed and simplistic, but most of all the Blueprint 3 is just plain boring.
To try and pass the Blueprint 3 off as a piece of eccentric, futuristic hip hop artistry is an insult to both all the pioneers Jay so weakly references in a ‘Star is Born,’ and to those looking to push the boundaries of the genre. It can only be assumed that Jay Z is consciously happy to rob school girls of their pocket money and pretend to remain relevant by an “arty” cover and the album’s production and guest credits alone, knowing that in a culture fed by public popularity and MTV he will still make a whole heap of money.
Simon is a regular contributor to Deft Magazine and active in the hip hop community in Paris. He earned his Bachelors of Law and Arts from New Zealand's University of Otago, Simon was also a DJ on Radio One Dunedin, in Otago, New Zealand.
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