Of all the wack Jay albums, I never really got the hate for this one
It's hated on the Booth for the following reasons:
1) It was a new Jay Z album
2) None of the Booth's favorite producers had tracks on it. Seeing Pharrell, Timbaland, Swizz, and Rick Rubin in that commercial automatically drew hate. The same commercial with Alchemist and Madlib would've been hundreds of pages of praise before one full song leaked.
3) The scavenger hunt for the lyrics before the album dropped. We saw the lyrics before hearing the album and some of them were cringeworthy.
4) Timbaland comparing the album to Blueprint and saying it was better even before the album dropped.
5) The videos especially "Picasso Baby".
6) The songs sound tiny and thin compared to how full and epic they sound in the commercial.
3-6 were perfectly valid reasons for hating this album