And yeah as someone who was in the south, kingdom come had no buzz, you heard show me what you got and all that on the radio but when wayne slid it, he took over what little buzz jay had with it.
It wasnt until american gangster soundtrack when Jay finally felt "back"
first off, Jay in his retirement status after The Black Album in 2003 made his 99 problems video where he was shot at the end before his neighborhood in brooklyn projected to the audience symbolizing 'what if he didn't make it out as a rapper and had his life cut short?' would he be considered as the greatest put in the same category as 2Pac, Biggie, Big Pun, Big L, etc that we unequivocally hold tribute to? Jay had to put a disclaimer before the video that he wasn't dead and it was just 'art' so MTV/BET would air it uncut. The reason that he announced that he was retiring was because he saw that g-unit was taking over given that in da club dropped in january but the buzz didn't cool down until late august, which pushed a lot of albums back, and jay announced that he was retiring in his prime. jay and 50 did their reebok deal and jay dissed nas and 50 as one last jab before he hung it up.
it was like a chess move because initially, it wouldn't make sense to diss someone in retirement because they wouldn't have the same arsenal to diss back in the rap arena, sorta like how we see joe budden, but jay ended up buying out dame from profiting in the rocafella deal and taking the majority of the profits to himself after he sold off the shares to def jam and then becoming the def jam president, signing jeezy and rick ross, etc to the label -- that is why whenever jeezy and rick ross need a jay-z feature, jay does it and no other rapper outside of rocafella has that special access to jay where he would just jump on your songs to stir up buzz and push units -- even when maybach music 2 didn't have jay, jay did his own freestyle to maybach 2 (with T-Pain on it, which made DOA more of another publicity diss to sell records, especially when watch the throne has autotune on the first track and BP3's sessions had autotune on it, not to mention kanye made a whole album with autotune and didn't catch any strays from Jay) after already being on the original maybach 1.
Rap megastar Jay-Z has revealed the true inspiration behind his new autotune critique - none other than Kanye West.
www.clashmusic.com
It felt like whenever jay took time to record a feature or remix after retirement, it would have the same effect as a posthumous makaveli/biggie song. But Cam spoke out that Jay did Dame dirty in the rocafella deal and that someone shot him in his lambo in his press conference alluding it was a hit from jay because jay was uncomfortable that cam was granted such a high position in rocafella when jay was on vacation promoted by dame. (cam was signed to rocafella because BIG wanted to sign Cam but wasn't able to before he passed away but by then, he already had his dipset movement and had more leverage when he was signed). Cam dissed Jay first trying to tarnish his legacy when he was still alive, so he was fair game. Later, hungry rappers like Game started dissing Jay because he wasn't able to first make amends with the 'maybach' line in The Documentary so he dissed jay to bring hype to himself given that his future was uncertain after being dropped from g-unit and resigned to geffin to promote his 2nd album. Most of the background shyt the public wasn't privy about until Cam/Dame spoke out about jay's dirty dealings behind the scenes. that is why Jay said "motherfukkers sayin' they made Hov/Made Hov say, "Okay, so make another Hov" on Lost Ones directed at Dame and dissed dame in his double entendre punchlines on "Brooklyn High" -- casual fans were not privy to the background drama for why Jay was dissing Dame in the first place when they fell out, evaporated the label over the years, and jay relaunched roc nation cutting dame out from the profits. Given how many appearances Jay was making on records, casual fans were only concerned that he would drop another album because it would only make sense to do so with his skills. Jay came back with a slower rapping cadence trying to reclaim the landscape of rap when he was retired and didn't come back fully until american gangster inspired by the movie, but then went into this new age direction of alternative sounds on BP3 while dissing autotune when the first 2 BP's dissed Nas and Prodigy with the original soul samples
Unbeknownst to the public that he as a major stake in it, Jay started promoting Ace of Spades upon his return, going out his rhyme pattern to mention it awkwardly in every one of his songs, which is incredibly overpriced given that they use the cheapest grapes and people today still drink ace because of the gold bottles not knowing it is a complete luxury scam given that connoisseurs already rank it pretty low compared to the ones in its class. It wasn't revealed later that Jay had a stake in Ace, which made people drink Ace more because it was linked to Jay, with people trying to capitalize to secure a Roc Nation deal. Nas signed to Def Jam when Jay was president and they had their MTV interview saying that they are partners but people still thought it was a bad look for nas because it looked like Nas won the battle but not the war.
People on limewire had the audience recording of 44 4's with the audience reactions and adlibs since 2006. Jay redid the song in CDQ to simulate the live recording as the bonus track of Kingdom Come rehashing ATCQ's 'Can I kick it?' beat. it was a sequel to 22 2's because canibus already did 33 3's, where 33 is the freemason number that jay didn't want to associate himself even more given the rumors. Later, 4 became jay's favorite synchronicity number because both jay and beyonce were born on the 4th, beyonce named her album 4, jay named his album 4:44, and both of them tatted 4 on their fingers
=== some shyt i forgot to mention, added above ===
we knew jay was going to come back because he kept on appearing on remixes, flex freestyles, and features given that he had to cosign new artists that he signed to Def Jam after he was president to make sure they were successful. At the same time, he was trying to secure his legacy while capitalizing on it by making sure Dame and Roc members didn't profit when it was sold to Def Jam, and he was being called out on that, so he had to come out of retirement to defend himself, and people knew his retirement was just a publicity stunt to sell records, because his discography would be worth more when he supposedly wasn't rapping anymore outside of a couple features.
he used the superman line at the end of the freestyle on kingdom come. he dissed jim jones as a publicity stunt to indirectly get back at cam and calling cam a snitch with his interview with nas, and cam said the jay-nas unification looked like the golden girls on mixtapes after the fallout with rocafella defending dame and getting shot at in his lambo
I remember just blaze on myspace in 2005 after jay's retirement made the kingdom come title track beat named as "the superman beat" and it was a different version where he talked on it for 5 minutes so people can't loop it and rap on it. it was on there for a year and this was before most people could figure out how to download songs off the myspace player with no download button...jay ended up buying the beat and putting superman references on it about clark kent and superman is alive, but I'm still looking for that original kingdom come instrumental because the layering had more complexity and you can simply muffle out and eliminate just blaze's voice with Vocal Remover | Isolate Voice & Instrumental Online | LALAL.AI
the usher-jay collab was better on usher's album and they couldn't recreate that magic when pressured to do so again on jay's album
this was when jay's illuminati rumors were rampant initially on forums and then youtube 'exposed' videos and jay couldn't defend himself because he wasn't rapping at the time and he had a slow roll out of addressing those rumors first on rick ross's 'free mason' and then on watch the throne. most of the album was the response to was cam'ron disses, indirectly referring to him as 'ole boy' on dig a hole, and there was an OG version with an uncleared sample or extended verse, i forgot
tru life was rapping on jay's old beats and doing jay's work for going at jim on mixtapes and has an unreleased song wit jay and a shelved album
jay was pretty much forced out of retirement after getting dissed hard by Cam and various Game namedrops and using jay beats on mixtapes, including 300 bars, 360 bars, one blood, etc
after the wet wipes video, jay was really afraid to take pictures with Jimmy Walker aka JJ Evans from Nas' ether diss to avoid the comparisons
after swagger jacker, it didn't look good that 'Kingdom Come' copied the rhyme pattern from Big L's 98 freestyle, bringing more to the accusation on swagger jacker, but Big L was supposed to sign to rocafella before he died, so it was argued that Jay was paying tribute to his rhymes subliminally, even though Big L wasn't credited or shouted out, like the other rhymes that Cam pointed out were bitten
Jay also used a lot of Rakim lines on Blue Magic and people were confused on why jay even talked about the 'Ringling brothers with the circus in the sky' line when he was trying to set up a Rakim rhyme scheme with the words swapped out adapting to lupe's metaphor raps, because jay cosigned lupe's debut album with his feature in 2006, so jay had a lot of metaphor/personification songs like "I Know" talking about heroin, that 50 already covered the concept on "A Baltimore Love Thing"
jay overspent def jam's budget with advertising (with his 3D glasses album cover of him trying to transition out of a hustler and into a mogul like superman changing looks with the comic book lines) and I think he had to repay some of it back...this was the original album cover but it was clowned because people didn't understand it with the dots and the glasses, so they reverted back to the red cover we know today
a lot of the budget went to the 'show me what you got' video inviting celeb cameos like danika patrick, dale earnhart jr, supercars racing in europe
The maybach excelero in jay's 'lost one' video never caught on in the rap community due to the recession
the beat to 'show me what you got' was just a remake of pharrell's first beat rumpshaker recredited to just blaze
mixtape wayne was on fire during this time and people listened to his remixes more than jay's original songs, including papoose's remix, where the budget was smaller popping up on the youtube algorithm and got more attention because it rode on the back of def jam's promotion money...we all thought juelz got next with the 'i can't feel my face' collab album but it never materialized outside of mixtapes because of his lean addiction influenced by wayne
jay initially dissed wayne on TI's 'watch what you say to me' but eventually gave in and traded collaborations with wayne on 'hello brooklyn 2.0' and 'mr carter' and addressing youtube's 'sudoku numbers' view count on american gangster's 'fallin' before it was acquired by google, which deleted a lot of old video gems before youtube could get contracts from the music industry to stream/monetize music back when they would delete your channel off one strike
And yeah as someone who was in the south, kingdom come had no buzz, you heard show me what you got and all that on the radio but when wayne slid it, he took over what little buzz jay had with it.
It wasnt until american gangster soundtrack when Jay finally felt "back"
My boy from atl (Marrietta) I know not Atlanta lol but he said when jeezy had go crazy with jay it did help spark up a little more out there but he was a jayz fan so it’s hard to gauge his opinion sometimes lol
My boy from atl (Marrietta) I know not Atlanta lol but he said when jeezy had go crazy with jay it did help spark up a little more out there but he was a jayz fan so it’s hard to gauge his opinion sometimes lol
It's a great jay verse and song but no not really, that didn't do much for his personal buzz. And really that was only like the 4th or 5th biggest song on that particular album
Before american gangster came out, he did a TV special performing it live and it got everybody back on board, then the album came out and it was good and the rest is history
That's how it went down for us in my particular area anyway
Jay is a master marketer. He is the one who coined the idea/comparison of rappers ‘retiring’ as if it’s sports. But it doesn’t even make sense. Not only for obvious reasons but also there was only 3 years between Black Album and Kingdom Come. To put that in perspective, Nas went 3 years between It was written and I am. It only felt like such a gap bc of the hype and the very big push on going ‘corporate’ (which I’m retrospect was a good luck for the culture)
To answer your question it was a bigger deal when jay retired and we thought we’d never hear him rap again. By the time he came back, he had dropped plenty music
People have e mentioned the features, but a low key forgotten aspect is the 2nd R Kelly album ‘Unfinished Business’ dropped in 2004. It was a terrible album, but it is a full 11 song jay z album with 2 singles that were on radio.
So ultimately you had: Black album November ‘03, Unfinished Business October ‘04, features (Go Crazy, ‘05), Grammy family freestyle summer ‘06 ….November ‘06 Kingdom Come
Jay is a master marketer. He is the one who coined the idea/comparison of rappers ‘retiring’ as if it’s sports. But it doesn’t even make sense. Not only for obvious reasons but also there was only 3 years between Black Album and Kingdom Come. To put that in perspective, Nas went 3 years between It was written and I am. It only felt like such a gap bc of the hype and the very big push on going ‘corporate’ (which I’m retrospect was a good luck for the culture)
To answer your question it was a bigger deal when jay retired and we thought we’d never hear him rap again. By the time he came back, he had dropped plenty music
People have e mentioned the features, but a low key forgotten aspect is the 2nd R Kelly album ‘Unfinished Business’ dropped in 2004. It was a terrible album, but it is a full 11 song jay z album with 2 singles that were on radio.
So ultimately you had: Black album November ‘03, Unfinished Business October ‘04, features (Go Crazy, ‘05), Grammy family freestyle summer ‘06 ….November ‘06 Kingdom Come
My boy from atl (Marrietta) I know not Atlanta lol but he said when jeezy had go crazy with jay it did help spark up a little more out there but he was a jayz fan so it’s hard to gauge his opinion sometimes lol
-This is right around the tipping point of the south taking over. Up until that point NY represented hardcore rap. The south was becoming popular but it wasn’t seen as street, it was party music, laid back cool music . Mind you we still wearing baggy clothes at this point so the culture is still street.
-TI was before Jeezy but wasnt quite ‘street’ like east coast cats could relate to.
-TM101 came out months before Carter 2 which is when weezy went to the moon, taking the south with him (with a new more digestible east coast flow ( gillie) and beats)
-So even before Carter 2 era Wayne, jeezy was really the first time a southern ngga had ‘east coast’ vibes. Cats can hate that ‘that’ mattered but it did. We was still comin off the jay z-50-dipset era.
For reference I went to college in VA basically the border of east coast and the south. At this time we still wanted traditional ‘east coast’ music at parties and clubs. And this is in VA so imagine how it was in NY. With Go Crazy, that went out the window. To hear this epic feature from jay z you had to play an Atlanta ngga’s record in the club and that they did. Cats fukin loved jeezy
Yep lol makes you wonder, if that never happens jay doesn’t have the escape roUte to say ‘see, I didnt fukk wit him’. We probably woulda got 2 more Best of both worlds, a tour, more pics of them together, etc.
Jay is a master marketer. He is the one who coined the idea/comparison of rappers ‘retiring’ as if it’s sports. But it doesn’t even make sense. Not only for obvious reasons but also there was only 3 years between Black Album and Kingdom Come. To put that in perspective, Nas went 3 years between It was written and I am. It only felt like such a gap bc of the hype and the very big push on going ‘corporate’ (which I’m retrospect was a good luck for the culture)
To answer your question it was a bigger deal when jay retired and we thought we’d never hear him rap again. By the time he came back, he had dropped plenty music
People have e mentioned the features, but a low key forgotten aspect is the 2nd R Kelly album ‘Unfinished Business’ dropped in 2004. It was a terrible album, but it is a full 11 song jay z album with 2 singles that were on radio.
So ultimately you had: Black album November ‘03, Unfinished Business October ‘04, features (Go Crazy, ‘05), Grammy family freestyle summer ‘06 ….November ‘06 Kingdom Come
The buzz was absolutely HUGE. I remember 06 like it was yesterday. Ghostface, Lupe, Jay-Z, Game, Nas, and T.I. (Who I mostly hated at the time) all dropped quality albums. Snap Music & the ringtone era had Hip Hop in a fukking CHOKE HOLD during the beginning of the year and it felt like only Kanye, still riding the wave from 05’s Late Registration would be any source of light. But then Ghost dropped in March of that year and Back Like That was a big single for him (mostly off the strength of Ne-Yo’s popularity) and the album was fukking F I R E. Then Nas announced Hip Hop Is Dead and everybody started debating the current quality of Hip Hop and the South’s dominance and nikkas got in their feelings. Lupe was doing his thing, even though T.I. Dropped early in the year, it felt like he RAN the summer (I live in Atlanta so this might be city/regional bias from radio) but it really felt like Why You Wanna was THE song of the summer.
During all of this there were rumors that Jay was coming back. I remember being on Allhiphop HEAVY back then and illseed was dropping rumors about Nas being in the studio with Just Blaze and Will I Am and Jay being in the studio with Dre Dre and Kanye. There were rumors that the album was going to be called Presidential Gala. Then when he dropped the official announcement via Entertainment Weekly the hype reached a fever pitch. The marketing campaign surrounding Show Me What You Got was I N S A N E! I remember even 50 Cent was in awe, saying it was the biggest marketing campaign he’d ever seen at the time.
The album did HUGE numbers first week (650k which is still Jay-Z’s biggest opening week to date) and everybody was so hype that Hov was back it took a few weeks for everybody to realize that album itself actually wasn’t that good lol. I remember Jay-Z stans saying it was better than Vol.1 and Vol.2. That it was going to bring Hip Hop back to New York. That Dig A Hole was the casket for Cam’ron’s grave. All kinds of crazy stan shyt lmao!
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‘Unfinished Business’ dropped in 2004. It was a terrible album, but it is a full 11 song jay z album with 2 singles that were on radio. 
