Jay-Z: Classic Or Dud?

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

ahh, could be. just weird that it's not even on youtube.

Can't Find the Hustle

Lol

I found that funnier than I should’ve tbh

that would piss me off, that's my fav song on the album. sets the tone so well. literally every Jay Z skeptic that I try to convert, I play that song first

i have this on 12 inch, so classic, just babies rhyming - jay is so fluid, unreal flow back then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6HE3A_G3no

i don't know when this was first out but i got it on the mixtape that came in the box with his reeboks, this fucking beat is delirious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TcD_IeMdG4

That has one of my favorite one liners: "I'm gonna raise hell til it's heaven"

That Big L/Jay freestyle is so good.

agreed, love that freestyle.

so i did some looking around and it seems the remix i was talking about is not currently available in the usa. set the vpn to uk and here it is.

nice

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