Milestones

Jay-Z

Name: Jay-Z – The Blueprint
Item: The Blueprint
Author: Tommaso Benelli

The Blueprint

2001 (Roc-a-fella / Def Jam)

rap

by Tommaso Benelli

Oh you're a soulful dude

One of the most famous stories of friendship and rivalry in hip-hop was born under the sign of this phrase. It was addressed to Jay-Z a Kanye West in which same day where the latter, backpack and CD in hand, showed up with a batch of instrumentals to pitch for his new album. This was in 2000: at the time, Jay-Z was already Jay-Z, still without Beyoncé by his side, but with five incredible years of success behind him that had made him a star of the genre as well as the greatest rapper in New York after the death of Biggie; West, then little more than a fledgling producer at the start of his career, was noticed by label executive Damon Dash (a close associate of the Brooklyn rapper) thanks to an interesting beat that the Chicago artist had composed for Beanie Sigel, a rapper signed to Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella. Dash's intention was to find Jay a soul-tinged instrumental that followed in the footsteps of "This Can't Be Life," one of his most recent hits.

What he ended up witnessing once in the studio, however, was the birth of an instant connection between artists, a meeting of visions, and a friendship. Kanye played a series of instrumentals and Jay-Z's reaction was nothing short of enthusiastic. Thanks to that encounter, Kanye West's career took off, while Jay's found the recipe for eternity. Many of the beat played that day would go on to define the album Jay-Z released a year later, on September 11, 2001: "The Blueprint," one of the greatest rap albums of all time.

You know when an artist enters the notorious "creative crisis"? Keep this in mind: American millionaire rappers don't go through creative crises, they don't know what they are, and even if they do go through them, they don't notice and don't think about it, so it's as if they didn't exist. But outsiders in the know – a category to which, unfortunately, given our mediocre lives, we belong – often have a different opinion, so it's fair to say that the closest thing to a creative crisis Shawn Carter, aka Jay-Z, born in New York in 1967, ever experienced was in the late 90s. His records were selling millions of copies, each churning out a couple of hits, but, well, they were missing something. Bite, edge, style, that sort of thing.

With "The Blueprint", with the incredible beats from Kanye West and Just Blaze, and a couple of things to say to Nas (with whom he had an ongoing diss), Jay-Z finally found himself again and delivered his best work since his debut "Reasonable Doubt" (1996), his other great classic.

First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up

Somebody got a problem with Hov

What’s up? Y’all niggas all fed up ‘cause I got a little cheddar

And my record’s movin’ out the store?

("Heart Of The City")

Finding himself again didn't so much mean regaining confidence, but the ability to pass it on to listeners. The confidence of believing so deeply that he was the best that he actually became it. That's what "The Blueprint" is: a number-one kind of album, from the number one himself. Listen to the aplomb with which Jay-Z lists his lovers all over the globe in "Girl, Girls, Girls", between one puff of a Cuban cigar and the next. Listen to the icy, boss-like manner in which he silences Nas and Prodigy of Mobb Deep on "Takeover", and the theatrical flair with which Jim Morrison's ghostly voice echoes up from beneath the beat in the sample of "Five To One". Listen closely to everything happening in the beat of the opening "The Ruler's Back" – an alternating dialogue of drums, swooping strings, soft horns, wah-wah-filtered electric guitar – with Jay opening the doors to his world and pausing at just the right moment to let the instrumental breathe – when, perfectly timed, a poignant fanfare kicks in. Listen to how, in the funky joy of "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)", a rough diamond that Kanye carved out of "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5, Jay-Z glides through effortlessly, freewheeling, tossing in a chorus whenever he feels like it, even two or three times per verse ("H to the Izz-O, V to the Izz-A": explaining what it means is complicated, let's just settle for how good it sounds, with that perfect little female backing vocal). It's the sound of a rapper in complete control of his own narrative.

Where realness ends and egotrip begins doesn't matter: within the space of these songs anything is possible, everything is true, and the result is a triumph. With the follow-up "The Black Album" (2003) – announced at the time as a grand farewell to music for a career that in fact never actually stopped – Jay-Z would do just as well, but "The Blueprint" remains superior, perhaps because it's untouched by the faint melancholy of a "last time", and is all the stronger for it.

The accents, the asides, the shifts in pace and rhythm, the urge to tell a story just for the sheer pleasure of telling it, nothing dressed up as everything: Jay-Z is like a bestseller writer well aware that the public is eagerly awaiting his next work, the author who revels in that mix of megalomania and I'm-already-rich-enough.

What you about to witness is my thoughts

Right or wrong

Just what I was feelin' at the time

You ever fel like this, vibe with me

Just vibe with me

(“The Ruler’s Back”)

Is there a single word of progress or humanity in "Izzo"? No! And in "Jigga That Nigga"? Clearly not, but there is an beat Middle Eastern-tinged beat that drives forward, over which Jay-Z raps exactly as he pleases, and that means brilliantly, about the usual stuff rappers talk about (hoes, money, etc.). The chipmunk-soul of "U Don't Know" pairs perfectly with the following "Hola Hovito" and its jazzy gangsta-latin frenzy (produced by Timbaland), while “Renegade” remains the historic meeting point between the best Black MC and the best white MC of the early 2000s: there's Eminem al beat on the mic, trading verses with Jay-Z in an athletic duel where perhaps – though it hardly matters – Marshall Mathers wins on points, but which only adds quality and prestige to the album.

There are two traits of Jay-Z the rapper that deserve highlighting, and they shine brightest on "The Blueprint".

Number 1: temperament. He's cold, like a glass of cuba libre iced, like the blood of someone who orders a hit over the phone. Jay-Z began his career playing himself, that is, a formerkingpin of the drug trade, the kind who never gets his hands dirty. Over the years his commitment to that imagery has gradually faded, but the temperament, the detachment, the sense of superiority remain the same. It isn't the coolness of the snob, it's more the absence of someone focused on more serious, more important thoughts – or on the dream woman waiting for him in bed. The Jay-Z of "The Blueprint" is no longer a hustler, but a talented, successful artist who, in a previous life, did other things, and traces of that past can still be heard in his attitude, in his sparing way of doling out details of his life.

Number 2: the voice. Jay-Z's voice sounds great, with a perfectly recognizable timbre that stamps every one of his albums with the artist's own patent. A great rapper isn't just one with the sharpest rhymes, the wittiest lyrics, the perfect flow and meter; it's also one with the right voice, an element you either have or you don't. And Jay-Z has it.

But Jay-Z also knows that a great rapper (and a great gangster) is nothing without his more sensitive side. If any Springsteen fans are reading, they should know that "Never Change" is Jay-Z's "Ties That Bind", the song where he admits that yes, you change and you grow, but certain roots last forever. "I'm still fuckin' with crime 'cause crime pays": these are the confessions of a hustler, laid down over Kanye's emotional beat, which tints everything with sweet nostalgia. To push the unlikely rock comparison further, "Song Cry", on the other hand, is something like a rap-inflected "Boys Don't Cry", a ballad about a love that's over, with an ache that would test even the coldest of hearts: "I can't see 'em coming down my eyes/ so I gotta make the song cry".

And if every album has its own signature track, this is it: "Heart Of The City (Ain't No Love)", built on a masterpiece of a beat courtesy of Mr West, who reworked that R&B gem of a track of the same name by Bobby "Blue" Bland. Amid soft guitar flourishes, sharp bursts of handclapping, and blaring horn stabs, Jay-Z raps as if he were the last keeper of the culture, the last one "still doing it". But there's melancholy in it too, because the instrumental keeps insisting on a different, disillusioned feeling, and what at first seems like just a lack of competition starts to sound like a lack of humanity, right there, in the beating heart of the city. So that when the chorus brings in Bobby Bland's voice singing "ain't no love in the heart of the city", and Jay-Z, in dialogue with his own music, asks "nigga, where's the love?", it creates an almost touching moment, one of pure urban lyricism. It makes you wonder what it's like to walk downtown in New York with this song playing in your headphones.

Mama ain't raise no fool

Put me anywhere on God's green Earth:

I'll triple my worth

("U Don't Know")

In 2011, ten years after the release of "The Blueprint", Jay-Z and Kanye West recorded their only album as a duo. In their first single, built on sample a famous Otis Redding track sample, you could hear Jay-Z kick things off with a “Sounds so soulful, don’t you agree?” that perfectly celebrated a decade-long friendship. Then, at some point no one can quite pin down, things took a strange turn: word has it the two split up over artistic differences (picture two elephants crammed into a Fiat Punto), and today it's unclear where things stand between them. Kanye brought Jay onto his latest record, and for his part Jay still calls him “my little brother”, but the feeling is that there's a lot left unsaid. But while it's still unclear where the story of their partnership will end up, it's well known how it began, in the grooves of an album written and recorded in two epic weeks at Baseline Studios in New York, one that left an indelible mark on the course of rap for years to come. The story of contemporary music, deeply tied to the influence of hip-hop culture, also runs through an artist like Jay-Z.

“The Blueprint” came out on September 11, 2001, the same day the only two buildings taller than the ego of Jay-Z collapsed under the suicide attacks of a mad act of terrorism, forever splitting the course of events. That week it still sold more than 400,000 copies.

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12/09/2021

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Tommaso Benelli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Tracklist

1. The Ruler's Back
2. Takeover
3. Izzo (H.O.V.A.)
4. Girls, Girls, Girls
5. Jigga That Nigga
6. U Don't Know
7. Hola' Hovito
8. Heart Of The City (Ain't No Love)
9. Never Change
10. Song Cry
11. All I Need
12. Renegade (feat. Eminem)
13. Blueprint (Momma Loves Me)
14. Lyrical Exercise
15. Girls, Girls, Girls (Part 2)

JAY-Z on the web

Official website

Jay-Z on OndaRock

Monograph

Jay-Z

Brooklyn's Finest

Many years have passed since 1996, and too many records, anecdotes and upheavals have occurred over the course of Jay-Z's long and eventful career (and life) to still overlook one of the most influential figures in the entire history of hip-hop and, by extension, of popular music this century. From his origins to today, we trace the long arc of a larger-than-life