“Magna Carta ... Holy Grail” arrives on a tsunami of marketing tied to
Jay-Z’s long-established role as hip-hop’s high achiever. His songs keep
retelling his success story: the drug dealer from the Brooklyn projects
who became a rapper, a star and an entertainment mogul without
forgetting the streets.
In Jay-Z lore, bigness and prestige are mandatory. Samsung bought a
million copies of “Magna Carta ...Holy Grail,” at $5 each, to give away
on Thursday through a mobile phone app on new models in advance of the
official release date, five days later. As a result of a change in
Recording Industry Association of America certification rules regarding
album downloads, the album will have gone platinum before appearing in
stores, and Jay-Z has become a digital standard-bearer.
Maintaining his monumental hubris, Jay-Z unveiled the album cover at Salisbury Cathedral in England, alongside a somewhat more historic document: one of the four extant copies of the original Magna Carta.
In his new songs,
Jay-Z boasts his usual boasts; he praises how “special” his flow is,
and he compulsively lists acquisitions, destinations and celebrity pals.
We get to hear again about his Basquiats, his Maybach, his Lamborghini
and his Hublot watch,
and he compares himself yet again to Michael Jackson and Muhammad Ali.
He also touts the corporate expansion of his Roc Nation into sports
management. He now aspires to becoming a billionaire. “I crash through
glass ceilings, I break through closed doors,” he exults in “Oceans.”
But on this album, the music often tells a different story: less
vainglorious, more ambivalent. “Oceans” itself — which, true to Jay-Z
wordplay, features Frank Ocean on vocals — juxtaposes thoughts of slave
ships with Jay-Z’s current luxury, cruising on a yacht; its track is a
brass-section elegy. It’s typical of an album on which Jay-Z turns away
from the anthemic pop of “Empire State of Mind,” the rock stomp of “99
Problems,” or the lavish mélange of electronics, sampled soul music and
orchestral buildups that he shared with Kanye West on “Watch the
Throne,” their brilliant 2011 duo album.
In retrospect, “Watch the Throne” set new, diverging trajectories for
both rappers: Mr. West toward a self-righteous, confrontational
crudeness and Jay-Z toward reflection, perspective and a little more
self-questioning. That album also led them to experiment. This year,
they have both gambled that name recognition and pent-up anticipation
would get their new albums noticed with or without radio hits.
At 43, Jay-Z has grown-up concerns, particularly parenthood; Blue Ivy
Carter was born in January 2012, making “Magna Carta ... Holy Grail”
Jay-Z’s first dad-rap album. Its most conflicted and vulnerable song is
“Jay Z Blue (Daddy Dearest).” Its track samples dialogue from “Mommie
Dearest” over an arrangement suffused with spaghetti-western foreboding;
the lyrics worry about how his “Father never taught me to be a father,”
adding, “I’m trying and I’m lying if I said I wasn’t scared.”
Jay-Z also mentions his daughter in the album’s opening track, “Holy
Grail,” where he’s cornered at a corner store by paparazzi trying to get
a baby picture. It’s part of a seesawing rap
about fame as an enticement, a burden, a problem dwarfed by other
people’s struggles, something he craves and something that might drive
him crazy. He ends up singing along with Justin Timberlake and
paraphrasing Kurt Cobain: “We all just entertainers, and we’re stupid
and contagious.”
Often, Jay-Z’s boasts are contested by tracks with their own stubborn
agendas: minor keys, empty spaces, unyielding arrangements that make his
rhymes dodge and weave around them. Another song about success,
“Crown,” with Jay-Z joined by the Texan rapper Travis Scott, moves on
somber chords and an oozing Southern hip-hop beat as anxiety — “best
friends become ya enemies” — takes over from bragging.
“Tom Ford,” which has Jay-Z living it up in Paris — “Spent all my euros
on tuxedos and weird clothes” — is a one-chord Timbaland production that
starts out hinting at Radiohead’s “Kid A” and turns into a thicket of
synthesizers, bubbling and ratcheting all around and making Jay-Z shove
his way into the rhythm. The tension improves the song; it’s about
contention, not just conspicuous consumption. Timbaland produced the
majority of the album, and his beats carry Jay-Z even when — as in
“Picasso Baby,” an art inventory — the lyrics revisit familiar ground.
But Jay-Z is still striving on “Magna Carta ... Holy Grail.” He ponders
faith, superstition and free thinking in “Heaven,” which quotes R.E.M.’s
“Losing My Religion,” while in “Nickels and Dimes,” he wonders whether
giving people handouts is just his way to assuage “survivor’s guilt”
over his escape from poverty. The songs aren’t cocky or neatly resolved;
they’re Jay-Z thinking aloud, grappling with complications that can’t
be resolved with cash.
The closest thing to a pop song on “Magna Carta ... Holy Grail” is “Part
II (On the Run).” It features Beyoncé, in creamy lead vocals and
breathy harmonies, trading verses with Jay-Z about fugitives finding
romance. “I hear sirens while we make love,” Beyoncé sings, and
Timbaland’s production sets aside his usual brittle tones to hint at the
keyboard confections of 1980s Lionel Richie and Don Henley.
Even with its thoughts of apprehension and death, the song is a cozy
refuge from the album’s ups and downs, its sometimes awkward mixture of
Jay-Z’s reflexes and his determination to sidestep them.
Though Timbaland’s productions always hold some sly surprises, “Magna
Carta ... Holy Grail” comes across largely as a transitional album, as
if Jay-Z has tired of pop but hasn’t found a reliable alternative. A
million sales are in his pocket; he can keep searching.
Culled from NYtimes
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