Jay-Z: Classic Or Dud?

I often find myself catching on to new little nuances in Jay-Z lyrics. Maybe I'm just slow on them to begin with, dunno. But I was just thinking about the line "Fresh out the frying pan into the fire/I be the music biz number one supplier." And I always heard that line as a nice little "rap game/crack game" thing, but I took the frying pan/fire part as kind of a throwaway, and it didn't occur to me until now that it was part of the same analogy.

IMO it's things like that that make Jay-Z a great rapper. He almost never wastes time with easy "I x like [guy who does x]" or "I'm x [because it rhymes with the next line]"-type lines unless there are several additional layers of meaning going on.

it's funny, it's been so long now since he's done anything but listening to Vol 2 Hard Knock Life today and goddamn he was really something

Ride or Die's verses are so mindblowing

though the album's ongoing conceit that memphis bleek is getting ready to take over the family business for jay is p funny in retrospect (though honestly hand it down and esp. coming of age (da sequel) are really amazing)

the Rap Radar podcasts on Tidal with Elliot Wilson and Jay are pretty fucking amazing, the most open he's ever been and just to hear him talk about the music business is pretty amazing, especially when he talks about stuff like Magna Carta and the deal he made w/Samsung, not counting Tidal streams or illegal downloads on Billboard, basically just the idea that he looks at stuff by the money, like I create this work and I am going to do it the best way at the time, like he got $10M cash for Magna Carta from Samsung...how many artists get that (after royalties, managers, label costs, video costs etc etc) for a big record?

Still his worst single because it was so damn omnipresente.

yeah that one was always annoying to me, such a lazy chorus, hardly any melody - glad it's no longer on the radio

Yes, and the Pac original is such a classic

It's weird, he's like 90s Aerosmith now, where a big portion of people who know him have never even heard his great albums

it's a bummer cause he has 6 amazing albums

yeah sometimes I hear an old song on a spotify radio station or something and it's like goddddaamn it he used to be so amazing (happened w/dead presidents recently)

i think there's ppl for whom black album is year 0

I was expecting the link to be about Big Pimpin.

if you think ’03 Bonnie & Clyde’ is worse than 'New York State of Mind' and the Linkin Park mash-up and 'Young Forever' idk

I was expecting the link to be about Big Pimpin.

― MarkoP, Friday, February 23, 2018 10:03 AM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

FP

yeah wtf

Already covered Alicia Keys, no desire to endure her again, thanks.

Shining is really great

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/03_Bonnie_%26_Clyde_single_cover.jpg

I was expecting the link to be about It’s a Hard Knock Life.

FP for you as well

the song so bad ... people are remaking it two decades later?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxcrBGUYnxA

history moves on without mr snrub

hard knock life and big pimpin are bad...very curious

Man, his American top ten hits as a lead artist are not the best demonstrations of his talent.

hey Alfred, what chart stuff are you referring to with Can I, Hard Knock etc not charting? they felt like such bigger hits than the stuff on that list

i think he means the period (the entire 1990s basically) where airplay had much more of an influence on charts than sales because people just didn't buy CD singles.

MTV play likely made up a lot of that ubiquity; feels like there was a time when big pimpin was on 24-7

i think he means the period (the entire 1990s basically) where airplay had much more of an influence on charts than sales because people just didn't buy CD singles.

it's the reverse situation, actually, at least in the 90s. cd (and cassette) singles were actually doing quite strong numbers all the way through that decade, and plenty of the biggest titles on the hot 100 were being driven overwhelmingly by their retail performance, especially those whose airplay was coming primarily from formats that were at the time not represented in the hot 100's formula. the situation that complicated the charts during that decade was that labels, in an effort to maximize album sales, were dramatically reducing the number of radio singles that they would actually release to retail. because billboard, until the end of 1998, stipulated that singles could only appear on the hot 100 if they were available in stores, this ended up meaning that at any given time before that rule revision, many of the most omnipresent hits of the day were not listed on the hot 100 at all -- a complete picture of the nation's biggest hits could only be gleaned by looking at the hot 100 and its airplay component chart (where the retail-absent hits could be found) together.

some other hits' hot 100 showings were driven by a sort of compromise between being fully retail-available (and thus presumably cutting away at album sales) and being retail-unavailable, even after the eligibility requirements were changed. the three non-top-10 singles alfred mentions in the post are good illustrations: both "can i get a..." and "big pimpin'" were available only on 12-inch vinyl (so they would have qualified for listing on the hot 100 even under its old rules), but had very minimal sales powering their placement (for instance, "can i get a..." was a top 10 airplay hit but stopped at #19 on the hot 100). "hard knock life" was in the same situation... for most of its chart run. two months after its airplay peak -- it had already fallen entirely off the hot 100 and the airplay chart -- cd and cassette versions of the single were finally released to stores, so it re-entered the hot 100 and reached its peak of #15 with essentially no airplay behind it.

another common strategy at the time was to manufacture a limited quantity of a single -- often 500,000 units, the minimum required for a gold certification -- then sell it at rock-bottom price to ensure that virtually no copies would be left by the time the single reached its airplay peak, thus leaving consumers with no option but the album. (in the meantime, its lofty soundscan numbers would hopefully ensure an eye-popping chart debut.) essentially, labels were frequently operating under the assumption that it was best for a big airplay hit to be absent from retail at the peak of its exposure. sometimes they could manage an impressive-looking chart peak while trying to pull off that maneuver, and sometimes they instead pulled off something that just looks bizarre in retrospect.

from late 2001 thru 2005, it largely did not matter what configurations, if any, a single was available in, as the retail singles market had essentially been killed off and virtually every single on the chart was being driven almost entirely by airplay. 2005 was the year digital download sales started being counted for the hot 100.

Yeah guys, duh!

lol sry i always go way too deep on the charts shite

(I actually think it’s rly interesting, I didn’t know all that)

Also worth noting that Hard Knock Life is still his biggest hit worldwide until Empire State Of Mind, the low US chart placing is a bit of an anomaly.

God I still remember seeing the video for Dead Presidents on BET, absolutely floored me....got goosebumps

i loved when rappers aspired to lexus's

happy b-day!
https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/jay-z-back-catalogue-albums-spotify-a4304016.html

let's try and guess jigga's biggest hit in 24h

lol i had no idea they weren't on there already

let's try and guess jigga's biggest hit in 24h

― corrs unplugged, Wednesday, December 4, 2019 6:44 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

the data will be skewed cause it looks like they kept whatever the play totals were when the songs dropped off spotify

it kinda sucks Jay is like Aerosmith now, there's a whole generation that isn't familiar with any of the work that made him great

i for one am listening to reasonable doubt

had to go straight to vol 1. i still get proud thinking about our jay z poll results.
JAY-Z ILM TRACKS POLL RESULTS - WORD TO THE HYPHEN IN MY NAME

it's funny, i have all this shit in my itunes but i still got excited that i'd be able to listen on spotify

Listening to In My Lifetime Vol. 1 in the first time in forever, goddamn he was just unreal back then

it's funny, i have all this shit in my itunes but i still got excited that i'd be able to listen on spotify

OTM

same

convenience is convenient

Listening to In My Lifetime Vol. 1 in the first time in forever, goddamn he was just unreal back then

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

seemed appropriate on this red letter day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q56pcwcl_k

p cool there are acapella albums up
https://open.spotify.com/album/0HsBuTvi6wWDj66sSbvA4H?si=wuicY87tSw6pfNXTlDWf-g

jay discussion on the rip kanye thread got me going back to some of his early stuff. i found something kind of weird. it seems the remix for "can't knock the hustle" (the with the melissa morgan sample that got it's own single) is nowhere to be found online. don't know if it's because of sample clearance issues or what (morgan performed on the remix, so that seems like a non-issue). closest thing i can find is a fan remake of the beat on youtube (which is pretty accurate, as i remember). there's a version of reasonable doubt on spotify that has it listed as an unplayable 15th track. oh well.

it's probably on tidal

that also reminds me that jay featured on big l's first album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLfrU4oN79w

"da graveyard" (1995)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFE5ucG9Yn4

dissing joe budden = evergreen

that reebok mixtape is one of his best projects, so much fun

wow, in peak form!

Listening to In My Lifetime Vol. 1 goddamn he was the best

Is he called Jay-Zed in the UK?

yeah he's on fire on that album. other than the shitty 'pop' tracks like "I Know What Boys Like", it still stands up really well, and those are easily skippable.

Listening to In My Lifetime Vol. 1 through 2001 goddamn he was the best

lil kim's verse on "i know what boys like" is pretty good

I remember bringing Vol 1 on a cruise ship once, for a 3 day cruise, my friend and I had it on while we were drinking rum in our rooms and having a lil mini-cabin dance party.

think I had that one and Reasonable Doubt w/ me

def one of the worst beats jay ever put on his albums, tho, sure.

xp

how is 'I know what girls like' a 'shitty pop track' this is 2023 its a sample of 'a fly girl'

its a *failed* puffy track, which is a slightly different thing—a puff song is a risk assessment on which its creative success depends on a kind of theatrical commercial unstoppableness & jay was bad at making those 'work' circa vol 1...but from a musical pov its just kinda awkward not bad

it's much weaker than anything on the rest of the album and isn't even remotely in his wheelhouse, that's why.

I meant it's a "shitty pop-rap track", not that pop is inherently shitty, I survived the popist-rockist wars of 2004 and I know what lines not to cross

whenever i think about the commercial failures of vol 1 it just makes me appreciate the curatorial flair of puffy more bc you realize its actually * not* as simple as taking a song from the 80s—you have to make it sound so crazy, too, which entails knowing *which* songs from the 80s will work in 1997

or maybe not *knowing* but kind of intuiting and gambling at a high level

i remember being really disappointed by in my lifetime; a handful of really incredible tracks, a bunch of filler, and a couple fairly gross overproduced radio attempts (of which "i know what boys like" is one; yes kim sounds great but she always sounded great* — the other is "city is mine" which i liked back then and still like now, even though i will admit that it's absolutely soulless). i was much more into the native tongues/organized konfusion/oc/gang starr vibe for nyc hiphop at the time so i liked the dj premier beats and i still say "streets is watchin" is maybe his best single (and probably my `pick only one` choice from the album). overall though, aquemini had just been released about a month before and that was where my head was really at. a few years previous, reasonable doubt and atliens also released within about six weeks of each other and reasonable doubt held up. not the case this time around. by the time the following august rolled around, "spottieottiedopaliscious" sounded better than ever while in my lifetime hadn't been played in months.

*think of "another" from life after death: awful track, but uhm ——
"you mad at me? too bad she ain't bad as me.
shoulda kept the freak bitch off my canopy.
now you see:
ain't no pussy warm as mine, long as mine.
ain't no lovin strong as this.
when i sucked your dick, it's like smokin' a roach.
uhh, why go from first class to coach?!
yeah, she had a habit of stealing the spotlight back then.

i liked the dj premier beats and i still say "streets is watchin" is maybe his best single

sorry didn't mean to imply "streets" is a premier beat. it's not. it just sounded like one.

dude.

you know what!?!

i had forgotten that in my lifetime is where "who you wit" ended up! that was originally on the sprung soundtrack and it was then, is now, and will continue to be the absolute shit. that's his best song, single or no. i just never really associated it with the album because 1) i bought the 12" asap because i didn't know where it would end up otherwise and 2) they buried it in the sequence with a different last verse or like a beat switch-up or smthg idk?? just... enh, stick with the og 12" version.

but anyway, yeah ski produced both "who you wit" and "streets is watchin" — definitely one of the better of the premier wannabes in those days. he had a bit more shine on his beats, but definitely rooted in that basic-ass chop`n`loop style.

I recently went back to Reasonable Doubt, which I heard for the first time long after my Jay fandom started. At the time - late 00s? - I was underwhelmed. But it’s solid as a rock (the Roc?) and I have no idea where my head was at then.

don't sleep on this remix (which i definitely have mentioned before on this thread). no, it doesn't outdo the mary j og, but they actually got meli'sa morgan on it which is very cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6_TMH8UkFc
jay-z feat meli'sa morgan - "can't knock the hustle (fool's paradise remix)" (1996)

it finally showed up on streaming about a year ago, which is nice. love jay's verses on this one; between this and "feelin it" from the album they kind of present the proper progenitor of what would become his entire persona. very classic beat, obvs.

"run through you, like
(aural shove)
...excuse you"

I love the fools paradise remix yea

Idk what 'overproduced' means, again—its just the hook from one famous '80s song over the beat from an 80s rap song, which is a formula that worked for many other rappers. ppl just didn't like the curatorial choices