A Hov album executive produced by peak Kanye should've been a slam dunk. Ye released MBDTF a year later and Watch the Throne came out 2 years after but somehow this didn't live up to expectations.
Jay was so out of sorts on this shyt. So many corny ideas and song choice....Venus vs Mars, Hate, Off Dat
It was like Jay couldn't figure what to do as a rapper. He knew he couldn't just repeat the mistakes of Kingdom Come and just strictly rap mogul shyt, but he couldn't do another American Gangster and do more drug dealer street rap. So he tried to combine his money talk awkwardly with this psuedo-arty hipster shyt that was big at the time but he just wasn't cut out for it. Camel was showing to Grizzly Bear shows
He was the living embodiment of this:
Even the two hits were on some corny stadium rap shyt and he was totally overshadowed by Rihanna and Alicia, to the point where people now don't even consider Empire State of Mind a Jay song. But that shyt was trash anyway.
There was a handful of nice songs but mostly for the production......I like Thank You, DOA obviously (although how you gonna say autotune is dead and then have autotune throughout the album
), On To the Next One kinda slaps....Swizz came through for once.
Shoutouts to Timbaland for serving up some straight up microwaved ass juice on this album. Been mostly trash ever since and somehow did a worse job on MCHG.
#neverforget
Weird album though. Not even bottom 2 Jay album. Doesn't get the hate of other albums but not one worth remembering either.
Jay was so out of sorts on this shyt. So many corny ideas and song choice....Venus vs Mars, Hate, Off Dat
It was like Jay couldn't figure what to do as a rapper. He knew he couldn't just repeat the mistakes of Kingdom Come and just strictly rap mogul shyt, but he couldn't do another American Gangster and do more drug dealer street rap. So he tried to combine his money talk awkwardly with this psuedo-arty hipster shyt that was big at the time but he just wasn't cut out for it. Camel was showing to Grizzly Bear shows
He was the living embodiment of this:
Even the two hits were on some corny stadium rap shyt and he was totally overshadowed by Rihanna and Alicia, to the point where people now don't even consider Empire State of Mind a Jay song. But that shyt was trash anyway.
There was a handful of nice songs but mostly for the production......I like Thank You, DOA obviously (although how you gonna say autotune is dead and then have autotune throughout the album
), On To the Next One kinda slaps....Swizz came through for once.Shoutouts to Timbaland for serving up some straight up microwaved ass juice on this album. Been mostly trash ever since and somehow did a worse job on MCHG.
#neverforget
Weird album though. Not even bottom 2 Jay album. Doesn't get the hate of other albums but not one worth remembering either.
