Jay-Z--'The Blueprint 3'

It’s sometimes helpful to think of Jay-Z in terms of trilogies. You had his Volume trilogy in the late nineties, the triumvirate of Reasonable Doubt, Kingdom Come, and American Gangster, and now The Blueprint trilogy. (This, of course, leaves Streets Is Watching and Roc la Familia to hover on their own, as well as The Best of Both Worlds and Unfinished Business, and we can only hope that, if Jay decides to complete one of these, he works with the former, not the latter. Oh, and there’s The Black Album, which could really form its own trilogy, bookended by Biggie, with the two discs of The Blueprint 2, but that’s neither here nor there.) Anyways, what made Jay-Z’s Volume trilogy a success was its progression from weak-ass glamour rap to all-attitude, back-to-the-streets hood anthems. The Reasonable…Gangster trio of albums works because of its compelling exploration of identity, both individual and musical.

This leaves us with The Blueprint trilogy, which can’t operate the same way as either of the others. It’s impossible to argue that Jay-Z’s lyricism or thematic focus has improved as one could with the Volumes. Additionally, it’s not very revealing to see the different parts of The Blueprint in terms of identity, since none of these albums seem to center around one particular understanding of the self. But what does provide a helpful critical lens with The Blueprint trilogy is to view the three albums in terms of time. The Blueprint is very much an album of the present. Sure, the album heavily relies on the soul sample for its emotional heft, but Jay simply uses them as the mise-en-scene for an album ultimately concerned with the rappers currently taking shots at the throne, which, Jay argued on the album, was rightfully his. The Blueprint 2 deals with the past. Not only does that LP include songs with direct references to Biggie and Pac, he also brings in guest verses from Dr. Dre and Rakim, production from Heavy D, and song titles that either reference past albums (“The Watcher 2,” “The Blueprint 2,” “U Don’t Know (Remix)”) or reference the past in general (“I Did It My Way,” “A Ballad for the Fallen Soldier”). What remains then, for The Blueprint 3, is the future.

The Blueprint 3’s first five tracks get your hopes set high that Jay really is on his futuristic flow here. The album opens with the synth-topia of “What We Talkin’ About” and moves to the horn-driven “Thank You” before entering familiar (if you’ve been following the pre-release hype) territory with “D.O.A.” and “Run This Town.” “Thank You” (“This is your song, not mines”) effectively introduces the idea of individual listener-controlled hip-hop (the closest we might ever get to hip-hop science fiction, considering the MC’s egocentric nature); “D.O.A.” finds Jay fittingly demanding a transition from auto-tune to other forms of expression over a beat that undergoes transformation from “Takeover”-esque banging guitar to violin-sounding sax solo and back; and “Run This Town” brings Jay-Z’s demands to fruition by reintroducing recent glam-pop superstar Kanye West as rapper. The sequence ends with “Empire State of Mind,” which in the album’s most embracingly optimistic moment envisions New York’s future as a post-recession, reborn land of opportunity.

And then the album comes to a screeching halt. Even the tracks whose titles are meant to explicitly evoke the future (“On to the Next One,” “Off That,” “A Star is Born”) come off as drab and dreary. Jay loads up on future-of-hip-hop candidates Drake, J. Cole, and Kid Cudi, but then only really lets J. Cole have the proper space to display his talents (and it’s a shame that Cole, an immensely talented, thoughtful MC, comes off as just aiight here). Whereas Jay’s summary-of-how-great/rich/trendsetting-I-am rap is forgivable on “What We Talkin’ About” as gateway to the album as a whole, it gets frustrating as wallpaper for the entire middle section of the album. If the future is just “I’m a work of art, I’m a Warhol already” and “compare me to Biggie and Pac already,” then Jay should just stop rhyming already and let us look back at the oeuvre he’s already created.

Where Jay-Z does succeed in the album’s second half—and really on the album as a whole—is in those moments where he realizes the future as experiment and true collaboration. This occurs only where Jay allows room for the full-fledged creative efforts of Kanye West. The Blueprint 3 is a significant step forward in Jay’s musical relationship with Kanye, auto-tune bashing aside. Kanye West is listed as co-executive producer on the album and appears not only as a highlight on “Run This Town” but on the second-half’s standout “Hate.” At two-and-a-half minutes in length, “Hate” is the album’s shortest track, but it’s also one of the few times Jay has been willing to throw aside completely the verse and hook structure that suffocates him on so many of his other tracks. The beat here is sick with robotic voice, laser shots, fuzz, and unobtrusive tribal drums, unlike anything Jay has ever rapped over on one of his LPs. And it sounds not like a contest, but like he and Kanye are just having fun for a couple of minutes: “I can’t even stomach myself—ulcer,” Jay jokes, while Kanye intones, “I ain’t ever sprung, but I spring-her—Jerry” and even imitates the beat’s laser sounds at one point with a “pyoom, pyoom, pyoom.”

The album’s other strong second-half moment is the album’s affecting closing track, “Forever Young.” Kanye doesn’t have a verse here, but the beat is resolutely his own: with its lulling, full synths, nodding drum patterns, it’s like the post-coital response to “What We Talkin’ About.” Plus, Jay is noticeably human here, asserting his ability to stay young forever (“And it never ends / Because all we have to do is hit rewind”) while not entirely concealing his fear that he won’t be (“when the director yells cut,” “fear not much while we’re alive”). Jay’s final line on the album is “I’m painting you a portrait of Young,” which suggests he’s not a work of art already, but still in the process of creating it. Let’s hope that he does this by coloring outside the lines a bit or at least letting talented young(er) artists like Kanye make the coloring book.