Rap music's main topic is egotism: it's the nature of the beast. Ninety percent of rap lyricism is discussing why the singer is superior to everything around him, and it's the endless available variations on that theme that give the music its brilliance and vitality. But Jay-Z's
The Black Album is in another class entirely. What Jay does here is kind of stand outside himself and view himself dispassionately, as an artifact, as a sensation, as a
thing. It was designed as Jay-Z's final statement, a wrapping-up of everything he ever needed to say about himself, and while it didn't turn out that way (much to my chagrin: everything he's done since, with the exception of about half the tracks on
American Gangster, has been pretty bad) it still works as a complete dissection of Jay-Z. What I'm trying to say here is that the lyrics are
brilliant. "Moment of Clarity" gets the most attention, mostly because of Jay's straight admission that several of his albums suck and he knows it, but there's also the astonishing wordplay of "99 Problems" (how many of you figured out he was talking about a literal
female dog in the phrase "I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one?" the first time you heard it? It must have taken me twenty listens) and the life's-story-in-a-track of "December 4th". The beats are peerless; even the often-mentioned "low point", the Neptunes' "Change Clothes", is nowhere near the worst of their work, and it's pretty damn catchy. Even the interlude has a fantastic beat! It speaks to Jay-Z's talent that something this good is only the
third best album of his career, and while there's a less-than-stellar track or two ("Allure" in particular has never done much for me") it's an excellent (fake) swan song.
MY RATING:
9.1
Jay-Z - "What More Can I Say"
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