The artist: Jay-Z

The album: The Blueprint 3 (Roc Nation)

The spin: On the The Blueprint 3, Jay-Z boasts he’s gone “from Brooklyn to down in Tribeca right next to DeNiro” and he’s gone from bragging about how many bricks he moved out the back of a rental car to bragging about how good his seats were for the Pacquaio fight. But despite the lifestyle changes, the underlying message remains the same: Jay-Z is still pretty damned impressed with Jay-Z.

Dubbing himself “the new Sinatra”, he raps over a series of glossy, expensive beats full of live instrumentation — strings, trumpets and hand-claps. This is the best production he’s gotten since his comeback from retirement in 2006.

“Blueprint 3” follows in the vein of his first 10 solo albums — all of which, he reminds us, have “gone No. 1”; all morphing elements of his life story (teenage drug dealer “called a camel” to multi-millionaire CEO married to the world’s biggest pop star) into a Charles Dickens story.

On “Empire State of the Mind” he takes a contemplative ride in his new Lexus through the McDonald’s parking lot in Harlem where he bought drugs and to an old apartment where he sold them.

There’s no hint of the actual person behind the story he has constructed for himself, nothing separating Sean Carter from Jay-Z. He only gets emotional when discussing his career, addressing the fans and critics “who want (Jay-Z) to go and fall from the top” on song (“Haters”) after song (“What We Talking About”) after song (“Already Home”) after song (“Reminder”).

He notes he’s “in the hall already, people compare me to Big and Pac already, like I’m gone already.” The guest-list is a glimpse at his mortality: Where the first Blueprint had one guest appearance on the entire album, the third is filled with big-name artists (Alicia Keyes, Kanye West, Young Jeezy and Rihanna) and even newcomers like Drake and Kid Cudi. His first attempt at a comeback single — the bombastic “DOA” which called for an end to the auto-tune phenomenon a year after it had already peaked — was met with shrugs. Kanye and Rihanna overshadow him on the first single “Run This Town,” a drastic role reversal from only five years ago, when he was the biggest name on their debut albums.

The album closes with a melodramatic sample of an ’80s glam-rock synthesizer ballad called “Young Forever.” No one actually stays that way, not even Jay-Z.

The grade: B+

– Jonathan Tjarks

Related articles by Zemanta

• Jay-Z ‘Excited’ For Fans To Hear Blueprint 3 On ‘The Leak’ (mtv.com)
• Jay-Z To Play Madison Square Garden On Album Release Day (mtv.com)