Many hip-hop fans are quick to tout Jay-Z as one of the greatest rappers of all time. It’s a perfectly understandable label for a man who’s produced some of the greatest works for the rap genre in the past 20 years. Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint and The Black Album are all forward-thinking, career-defining works. They’re also the albums Jay-Z devotees choose to remember. They ignore the fact that this man has made more turds of albums than good ones. If In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, The Blueprint 2 and Kingdom Come were the primary works of Jay-Z’s oeuvre, he would probably be about as acclaimed as, say, Coolio, or a wet rag lying in a recording studio.
Jay-Z’s proclivity to mediocrity culminates in his newest release, Magna Carta… Holy Grail. On the song “La Familia,” Jay spits what might be the greatest, most inspirational verse of his rap career: “Niggas wanna kidnap wifey/ Good luck with that, bruh/ You must gon hide your whole family/ What you think we wearing black for/ Ready for that war/ Ready for that war, ready/ You ain’t ready yo, you radio/ You ain’t really ready/ Real shit chyea.” From these lyrics to a monotonous sixteenth-note drum machine beat, “La Familia” is an easy contender for “Most Horseshit Song of 2013.” The album’s remaining 15 songs are filled with similarly mundane lyrics, gratuitous celebrity references, little thematic cohesiveness and scattershot beat choices.
The album’s opener, “Holy Grail,” features a beautiful chorus sung by Justin Timberlake in a saintly falsetto, but the grandeur of the chorus is completely obliterated by another generic drum machine beat and nonstop references to celebrities who were destroyed by fame. Yet he clings to his fame when he says, “Nigga you survived/ You still getting bigger nigga/ Living the life, Vanilla wafers in a villa/ Illest nigga alive/ Michael Jackson’s Thriller.” Somehow, the brief mention of Michael Jackson’s Thriller is supposed to wrap up the song’s thesis on the hardships of fame. However, like nearly every other cultural reference on this album, it fails miserably in thematically connecting itself to the rest of the lyrics without sounding completely stilted.
It’s as if Jay-Z has discovered similes for the first time. On “Picasso Baby,” Jay compares his flow to Leonardo Da Vinci’s-because everyone knows that Da Vinci was known for his impeccable flow. On “Oceans,” Jay-Z boasts, “I’m on the ocean, I’m in heaven/ Yachting, Ocean’s 11.” Very clever, Jay-Z: you’re talking about oceans in the song, and you mention a movie that has the word “ocean” in it! Genius! These references somehow manage to be just as unenjoyable as Drake or Childish Gambino’s abysmal hashtag rap.
The album only occasionally redeems itself with its production. “Picasso Baby” sports a fun, slap-bass beat. The sound of “F.U.T.W.” revolves around tubular bell-esque keys looped atop hard-hitting bass notes. “Somewhereinamerica”-the sonic highlight of the album-deftly combines live drums, punctuated horns and tight, chromatic piano chords. This mixture of sound gives extra poignancy to lines like “Somewhere in America/ Miley Cyrus is still twerkin'” before the song explodes into an inspiring, string-fueled coda. However, most of the production on the album is as mundane as Jay-Z’s lyrics. Several of the songs, including “Tom Ford” and “FuckWithMeYouKnowIGotIt” allow him to experiment with trap production. However, his voice is about as suited for trap beats as Josh Groban’s is to death metal. And these beats are nothing new-or interesting at that.
On “Picasso Baby,” Jay-Z asks his listeners, “What’s it gon take for me to go/ For you to see, I’m the modern day Pablo, Picasso baby”? Sorry, Jay-Z, but it’s going to take a lot. At 16 songs and nearly an hour in length, Magna Carta… Holy Grail is a brutally monotonous, painful listen. In the future, Jay-Z might make another classic hip-hop album. When that’s done, this album will slip back into his discography as a forgettable work, and his fans will be fine with that. They’ll forget this vomit stain of an album ever existed and continue to tout Jay-Z as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Oh well.
2 out of 5 stars
