Review Summary: Soulful beats and tight rhymes: Jigga at his finest
Most MCs wish they could've been on Jay-Z's level in 2001. He was a household name in hip-hop, and had already sold more records than you and I could count. However, Jay found himself trapped in the very same critical pitfall his to be enemy Nas had fallen into. While achieving mainstream recognition, both rappers found it impossible to recreate the critical acclaim their classic debuts had received. Nas was haunted by the ghost of Illmatic, and with each subsequent record his attempts to make an album worthy of his legendary debut dropped him further and further into that dark critical pitfall. Jay found himself faring only slightly better in his own attempts to one-up Reasonable Doubt, and by the time his 5th album The Dynasty: Roc La Familia dropped to mixed reviews from critics, it seemed that it would be unlikely that Jay would record another classic. At first, The Blueprint wasn't seen as Jay's comeback album or the album that would forever cement him into hip-hop's legacy. To many people, it was seen as a just another stop for the ever growing Roc-A-Fella money train. But boy did people's opinions change when they heard it.
The Blueprint had the unfortunate distinction of being slated for release on the exact day of the 9/11 attacks. This unfortunate coincidence would've ruined the sales of any other artist's record, but being the commercial juggernaut that Jay was, any mention of his name was bound to result in profit. Let that not take away from the quality of The Blueprint though, because plain and simple, good music will be listened to no matter te consequences. The Blueprint's impact on the rap game was immediate upon its release. Jay went from great MC to "god MC", and officially took over the throne of master MC, a seat which had been empty since the murder of Jay's hero Biggie Smalls.
In what may seem like a coincidence (or not?) this record's name pretty much describes its immediate impact on the rap game - it indeed provided a blueprint for mainstream hip-hop, helping revive the nearly dead art of sampling which had been rendered archaic by the Timbaland sound. In a time where Metallica spent all their energy on fighting Napster about copyrights, and most producers avoided sampling out of the fear that they would violate some of the many copyright laws that had come into play at the time, producers Kanye West and Just Blaze resurrected sampling and created a wonderful set of beats that brought back the sounds of 60's and 70's soul to the mainstream. West and Just Blaze constructed a rich, soulful musical palette out of classic Tom Brock, David Ruffin, Jackson 5 and Doors samples, crafting a sound which was totally new and refreshing in the hip-hop world at the time, and setting the stage for West's master production on The College Dropout.
If you're looking for the cocky hustler Jay from Reasonable Doubt, you're outta luck here. The Blueprint's lyricism reveals a hungrier, angrier Jigga poised on destroying all of his detractors. This isn't more evident than on the scathing diss track "Takeover", where Jay proclaims himself as "god MC, Jayhova" and drops bombs on Mobb Deep member Prodigy and rival Nas. Over a wonderfully manipulated Doors sample by West, Jay absolutely destroys Nas, insulting him for not releasing anything decent for 10 years and calling his flow garbage. "Girls, Girls, Girls", an ode to women driven by a smooth, soulful Just Blaze beat, features some of Jay's finest wordplay on the album:
Now that's Spanish chick, French chick, Indian and black
That's fried chicken, curry chicken, damn I'm gettin fat
Arroz con pollo, french fries and crepe
An appetitite for destruction but I scrape the plate
Perhaps The Blueprint's finest moment is the Kanye West produced track "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love", which has Jay dropping more and more of the endless stream of haters he apparently has: "Young ***s spitting at me, young rappers getting at me, My nigga Big predicted the *** exactly, More money, more problems - gotta move carefully". While The Blueprint may be mostly a one man show, Eminem drops in and contributes a track, "Renegade", and the two MCs commence to drop some brilliant rhymes over the piano loops and strings of Em's tight beat.
Jay managed to hit the best of both worlds with The Blueprint, creating a balance of mainstream accessibility and street credibility that had something for every hip-hop fan. Perhaps this is the balance that Jay was unable to recreate in the post Reasonable Doubt years, and ended up alienating some of the fans who enjoyed the realism of that classic debut. I can't blame him, striking up a balance between the mainstream and the underground is among the most difficult tasks in music. With The Blueprint however, Jay strikes up this balance better than anyone else since his muse Biggie. While it's no "Juicy", I'm pretty sure The Blueprint will be good enough for now, and most likely a long while.
