Quote:
|
Originally Posted by noisereductions
"Hard Knock Life" is amazing - and I mostly think that Jay's carrier was horrible for that stretch. Seriously I think the IN MY LIFE or whatever trilogy is pretty much the worst era of his work. How you go from Reasonable Doubt to those three records? Everything* before and after is better albums. I mean I'd still rather hear I don't know... Streets Is Watching?
*except the R. Kelly collabs.
I also think it's stupid to even spend any brain power debating a Rolling Stone mag list of hip hop songs in 2017. I mean I grew up reading that mag, but they're so antiquated at this point who are we kidding even discussing?
|
I basically agree. I definitely agree that "Hard Knock Life" was the absolute highlight of the In My Lifetime... era. Those albums had some moments, especially, I believe, the first one. But on the whole, they're quite shoddy. Their "moments" are few. Most of them are pretty minor moments. Except for "Hard Knock Life," which is about as perfect as radio rap got in 1998.
I used to excuse those albums, because I was just plain loyal to Jay Z — I mean, he can be so impressive at his best that it's really hard to think of him as an artist who was lacking, especially with all that kind of retroactive legendary status that became affixed to his name and brand in the late-'00s and early-2010s. But you're goddamn right... when you look at what he's capable of when he's really ON... when you look at his truly great albums (Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint, The Black Album, American Gangster, **Watch the Throne), it's hard to forgive his earlier discretions. ESPECIALLY those R. Kelly collabs. YEESH.
** It's kind of interesting that despite the shared album credit, Watch the Throne has become, rather indesputably, a "Kanye" thing at this point. Like, when people list the Kanye albums (which many critics and bloggers and bloggers have been doing online since COMPLEX put that list together a while back), WTT is always included. Not included with an asterisk, but ranked right alongside College Dropout and MBDTF. Jay's name may have come first on the album itself, but as far as popular discourse goes, WTT is a Kanye joint.
As it really should be. Jay had some great verses on that album, but what would it have been without Kanye's curative abilities? His sense of style and flow. His humor. His own production, and his actual rapping on the tracks, which I believe goes just as hard as Jay's in most cases.
Jay tried his hand at executive producing and curating... remember that? The Baz Luhrman Great Gatsby "soundtrack?" Yeah... I don't really remember it either, except that it re-used "No Church in the Wild," a
very Kanye-centric WTT song.
Hahaha!