great album
13 years in and still was moving the culture
unprecedented run
13 years in and still was moving the culture
unprecedented run
great album
13 years in and still was moving the culture
unprecedented run
Yea I was gonna say Timbo really dropped the ball on this album, and that Just Blaze was really needed, he’d been a staple on Hov albums for the past 10 years. This is around the time he was producing heat like Exhibit A and C.Very weird album. The highs were good. But man the lows was ass, like legit some of the worst songs he recorded. Beat selection was weird as well. Just Blaze not having production on there was a bad call. Timbo even admitted he was on the drugs at the time putting bullshyt on there
Off that
Venus Vs Mars
Hate
Reminder(the just remix is fire, again the production is ass)
Some solid tracks, but some really hilarious missteps. He had a hard time finding a single. There's a few cuts that they tried to make work around fall 2008. They weren't awful, but yeah, he was trying to find a sound. It's a very commercial album, a lot of gloss, and not a lot of fire verses or writing.
Thank You
Run This Town
What We Talking About
Real As it Gets
Young Forever
Jay is in my top 3, but the shift between everything post Dynasty to me, has never worked as well as his old stuff, but that's the nature of the game. Artists have to try new things and push themselves, and it doesn't always work, but what happens is they always go forward. Jay's like that. So is Nas. This is why they are who they are now.
This here.
Thing is, after TBA, Jay didn't have a real A&R working his albums anymore. The whole Roc team was gone, and he was just linking with producers and recording. But the process was just him. Then when he did AG, he had Puff around and he was helping with A&R on that project. But that was the last time he really had someone in the room to guide him
And it definitely showed in the music.
Right, then there's the behind the scenes, the business side, the stuff you know a lot about, and that plays a major role. I hadn't even thought of that, but yeah for sure, all those teams and guys change. Guys that help shape the vision or the theme of an album, the way a director has the director of photography.
Jay lost a certain sharpness, an edge, in his voice, in his content, after Dynasty. Again, he had to evolve, but that sense of storytelling, that raw street confidence, kind of shifted into a more blander business, corporate sense of confidence. He started mumbling a lot. It wasn't just the flow, it was the content, the writing. He never wrote anything as sick as Dynasty Intro after 2000. Never got close.