Quantcast
Channel: disastercouch » Hip-Hop
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

Track by Track with Magna Carta…Holy Grail

0
0
magna-carta-holy-grail-review-3
Just when you thought I couldn’t possibly get more mainstream and pedestrian in my music taste, I present to you my complete, track-by-track notes on the new Jay-Z album.  I am utterly fascinated by the intersection between rap and celebrity — because celebrity rappers rap about themselves and their relationship with the media and their wealth and their place in the Pantheon of Cultural Legends in a very explicit way that goes way beyond any of the sort of coy approach that rockers and other pop acts have generally taken to addressing their celebrity status (if they address it all).
As far as a music listening experience, I give Magna Carta…Holy Grail a B.  For the record, the only Jay-Z album I would give an A to is The Blueprint, with a provisional A- for Danger Mouse’s mashup project The Grey Album (provisional because can it be called a Jay-Z album if it was made without his consent or knowledge?).  If you think I’m an idiot for not thinking Reasonable Doubt is “the shit” then by all means, the comments section awaits.
But as far as a cultural artifact, Magna Carta is certainly a A+.  In the future when whoever the future version of Gore Vidal turns out to be writes a semi-fictionalized novelistic account of the Obama era, Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Blue Ivy Carter will be some of the most fascinating characters and Magna Carta will serve as excellent source material.
What follows is basically my stream of consciousness reactions to my first all-the-way-through listen to the album.  Kind of a like a live-blog, except I’m posting it all at once after the fact.  I apologize if you don’t like the incomplete thoughts and inconclusive conclusions necessitated by this format, but there was so much to unpack on this record I thought this would be the best way to tackle it without turning out a 10,000 word snooze fest on what is, after all, the Bad Boys II of this summer’s album releases*. I apologize that I pretty much lose the plot and the notes become incoherent around track 6, like I said, it’s not that good of an album so I was starting to get kinda bored and antsy.
magna-carta-holy-grail-jay-z
Experience of listening to the album via the much-vaunted Samsung Galaxy app:  Pretty horrible.  Crashes constantly (six times while working on this post).  Does not have the option to just play the fucking album straight through, only to play the individual tracks.  Includes the lyrics, which is a plus, but the objectionable lyrics are inexplicably blacked out, even though the download is the explicit version of the album.  Also, what is the reasoning behind censoring the word “cholo?”
Track 1: Holy Grail (featuring Justin Timberlake, produced by J-Roc, The Dream and Timbaland)
The album opens with a long, dramatic sung verse by Justin Timberlake, which sounds more like Journey or Styx or Foreigner than any hip-hop or r&b, except for the omnipresent background ‘hypeman’ vocal echoes — this section ends really strongly with Justin mean-mugging the words “holy grail”, the beat dropping, and Jay’s first verse starting immediately.
Fittingly the very first word Jay speaks on the album is “Blue.”  Despite his exhortations to the media/paparazzi to leave his daughter alone, he makes her one of the central characters in the album (see also in the next  track when Jay tells her to go on an’ lean on that Basquiat, she owns it).
In the second verse, is he talking to himself or to his friend Kanye when he raps “why you mad/take the good with the bad/ don’t throw that baby out with that bath water”?  Either way it is so refreshing to hear one of these guys finally abandon the whole “you don’t know how hard it is to be rich” thing and just admit that his life is fucking amazeballs.
2. Picasso Baby (prod. Adrian Younge, J-Roc & Timbaland)
This beat sounds a little bit like a Clipse track (maybe something from the Black Card Era mixtape) but a little more outerspacey — like Frank Zappa outer space though, not Sun Ra outer space (always define your terms).
I’ts pretty interesting subject matter, Jay is expressing admiration for artists from Pablo Picasso to Jeff Koons to Jean Michel Basquiat.  He and Beyonce’s living room, we are to understand, could easily be mistaken for a wing of the MoMA.  Then he takes it a bit farther and suggests that his body of work belongs together with that of the artists he already named — where, after all, is MoMA’s “Hov” collection?
The last third of the song largely dismisses with art-world talk in order to return to the bigger theme of the album and really Jay’s whole career post-Reasonable Doubt: Hov’s still on top and if you don’t like it — critics, Nas fans — you are more than welcome to shove off.  Despite a couple satisfying puns — he subtly compares the paparazzi that hound him now to gangbangers that hounded him in the old neighborhood by switching out “cannons” for “Canons” — it’s a disposable verse that could be slotted into any song or any guest appearance.  The most interesting thing is that the backing track has switched from the Clipse-like opening to a kind of live band, funky take on “99 Problems,” which I think it is safe to say has been enshrined as the number one Jay song of all time.  Why Jay chooses to call back to it here, other than to highlight the fact that, a decade on, his primary concerns remain more or less the same (except for that baby thing), I don’t know.
3. Tom Ford (prod. J-Roc & Timbaland)
Very sparse electro drum beat, eventually joined by some squiggly arcade machine synths.
“Bordeaux and Burgundies/flush outta Riesling”— rappers taste in beverages continues to steadily improve.  Once upon a time it was all designer vodka, of course plenty of brand name cognac, then a parade of demi-sec sparkling wines (Krystal, “ricky” rose), and most recently, Kanye has been heard singing the praises of Riesling, the approachable go-to white of all young sommeliers.  Jay takes it up a notch, calling out to his Bordeaux and Burgundy, saying he is now entering the realm of collectible red wines, kind of continuing the trend on this record of Jay leaving behind the crowded world of the nouveau riche and entering the real echelons of (mostly white) power.
“International bring back the Concorde” — Jay would like to say that his frequent trans-Atlantic flights grow tiresome, and he would welcome a return of the supersonic Concorde flights from his native NYC to Paris and London.
“I don’t pop molly/I rock tom ford” — is that cool?  Not partying hard, just being super rich?  like, Jay goes to the opera while 2Chainz and Wacka Flocka Flame are hosting a twerk-off down at the Landing Strip…who is having more fun?
4. Fuckwithmeyouknowigotit (feat. Rick Ross, prod. Boi-1da, Timbaland and Vinylz)
Opens with a recording of the late Pimp C talking:

A Little over a year ago I was in bondage, and now I’m back out here reaping the blessings and getting the benefits that go along with it.  Everything that’s out here for kings like us.  The reason why we like this this jewelry and this diamonds and stuff, they don’t understand is because we really from Africa, and that’s where all this stuff come from.  And we originated from kings, you know what I’m saying.  So don’t look down on the youngsters because they wanna have shiny things.  It’s in our genes, know what I’m saying, we just don’t all know our history so…

 This is followed by a Rick Ross verse.  In other Rick Ross news, I saw what I thought was a shirtless Rick Ross on Lake Shore Drive this morning but he was in a Chevy Equinox and not a Bugatti so it probably wasn’t him.
A lot was made recently of Jay-Z giving up the word “bitch” now that he has a baby daughter.  The first of three uses of the supposedly verboten word on this album is dropped by Mr. Ross, so I guess Jay isn’t directly implicated.
There are some musical elements that are being picked up here from Chicago Drill Music, in the drum beat,  with the very long pauses between lines and the repeated words at the end of each line, although Jay gets pretty tired of that and breaks away from the paradigm partway through his verse.
Does Beyonce get mad that Jay-z sometimes describes her as if he is describing yet another of his many possessions? I mean, he is also flattering her, for example when he compares her to the Mona Lisa (but better looking) in “Picasso Baby,” but it often feels as if “hottest woman in the world” is just the final piece in “Jay-Z’s Collection of Coolest S**T of All Time”, that he keeps her right next to his Brooklyn Nets shares and his platinum records.
5. Oceans (feat. Frank Ocean, prod. Pharrell Williams & Timbaland)
It seems really goofy to call the song which is obviously written just to feature Frank Ocean “Oceans.”
“I hope my black skin don’t dirt this white tuxedo/Before the Basquiat show” — pretty devastating take by Frank on the toughness of being black at the top of white society.
Includes one of Jay’s most political verses ever, indicting all of American history as a crime “I’m anti-Santa Maria/Only Christopher we acknowledge is Wallace/I don’t even like Washingtons in my pocket”.
“I crash through glass ceilings” — didn’t Kanye also misappropriate the glass ceiling metaphor on his album?
“Shepard Fairey the finally gave me some hope/can’t believe they got a nigga to vote/democrat/Nope/I sold dope” This line seems to imply that Jay was not able to vote because of a felony conviction, though as far as my research could turn up he has never been convicted of any crime.  It’s an interesting point, nonetheless, because Jay quite smartly and subtly notes that the rule against convicted felons voting in national elections effectively eliminates 1/4 of black men from the polls, constituting yet another soft form of voting rights infringement, especially when you consider the number of those felony convictions that are drug-related, and that black men are disproportionately subject to stop-and-frisk as well as searches during traffic stops, which land them in jail, whereas white guys walking or driving around with drugs or paraphernalia are relatively safe from harassment even when they do, in fact, have an ‘intent to distribute.’
6. FUTW (prod. J-Roc & Timbaland)
“got the strip club feeling like Oxford”
7. somewhereinamerica (prod. Hit-Boy and Mike Dean)
Jay shouts out to his Sonos wireless home entertainment system, proof that Hova has reached middle age.
Most important lyric on the album:  “somewhere in america/Miley Cyrus is still twerkin'”
(Miley being a well documented Jay-Z fan, this was a perfect moment).
one of dozens of promotional stills featuring Jay-Z in this Go Home! sweatshirt included the album's various supplementary materials

one of dozens of promotional stills featuring Jay-Z in this Go Home! sweatshirt included the album’s various supplementary materials

8. Crown (feat. Travis Scott, prod. Travis Scott, Mike Dean & Wondagurl)
Starts with “you in the presence of a king” — kind of a pastiche of a few classic Jay lines, followed by “scratch that, you in the presence of a God,” so he’s definitely charting some Kanye territory here — there are some other thematic and sonic resonances with Yeezus, but Jay is so turned down compared to Kanye it’s hard for me to even imagine how the two of them work together, let alone hang out (if they do in fact hang out…I bet Ye never hangs out with anybody, he just has room like JP’s office where he does nothing but watch silent movies and listen to his own records).
“Uncle said I’ll never sell a million records/I sold a million records like a million times” — the whole million records thing comes up several times on this album, with increasingly specific references to the fact that Jay had Samsung signed up to pay for a million copies of the album on release day.  He is rapping about a record deal on the record that the deal is related to.  It’s so baller and so meta.  It kind of reminds me of Mike Jones, who had a song about how nobody cared about him until he was famous, except that was the song that made him famous.  Only hip-hop can accomplish that weird feeling of hyperreality wherein “if you rap it, they will come.”
If hip-hop is the CNN of the streets, what does it mean when actual CNN’s newscrawl mentions Jay-Z every six minutes?
There is simply too much empty, non-rapping space on this record, without enough of a unified vision on the sonic end to carry it.
9. Heaven (prod. J-Roc, The-Dream and Timbaland)
“conspiracy theoriests screaming Illuminati”
Jay-Z sneaks the entire chorus of R.E.M’s “Losing my Religion” into one of his best verses on the album.  After quoting Stipe, Jay goes on to interweave his obsession with cars and material things into his thoughts on religion:
“getting ghost in the Ghost/Can you see me/ Can you see me/ Have mercy on a Judas / Angel wings on ‘ghini/I’m/Secular tell the hecklers/Seckle down y’all relgion creates division like my Maybach partition”
10. Versus (interlude)
no notes.  it’s an interlude.
photo via US magazine used without permission don't sue me

photo via US magazine used without permission don’t sue me

11.  Part II (on the run) (feat. Beyonce, prod. J-Roc Timbaland)
“Who wants that perfect love story any way?”
This could possibly be a hit single, the production is satisfyingly huge, really recalling classic Jay Z bangers (Blueprint era) but incorporating current sounds (which are 80s sounds) with a heavy Italo disco influence and those ever-present Phil Collins gated drums.  Maybe too slow moving for radio though, just in terms of the verses being really long, not in terms of tempo.
Part of the whole narrative of Jay and Beyonce is that Jay elevates Beyonce, that somehow his marrying her catapulted her career, but you rarely hear anyone looking at it from the other way around — who is really bigger though, Yon’ce or Jay?  I’d like to see some sales data.
I think this song totally rules by the way.
“without you I got nothing to lose” <—- pretty sweet sentiment; Again, I sort of wish that Jay was saying it to Beyonce, not the other way around.
12.  Beach is Better (prod. Mike Will Made It)
Again, no notes, super short track not really a full song.
13. BBC (feat. Nas, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, prod. Swizz Beats, Pharrell, Timbaland)
“D Boy drug dealer look”
WOW THAT IS A SUPER GOOD VERSE FROM NAS.  That’s right, who would have believed that one day the hottest guest verse on a Jay album would be from Nas?
Part of that is that when Jay does have some ‘battle rap’ type verses elsewhere on Magna Carta, longtime Jay-z fans may just subconsciously assume that they’re directed at Nas, but then you realize they could really be directed at anyone and for the most part the whole Nas/Jay-Z thing existed only because the two best rappers alive must necessarily be foils for each other.  Even back in the very early days of hip hop you had hotly contested rivalries between crews in the Bronx, then we had Biggie and Tupac, we had Nas and Jay.  The Game and 50 Cent had a pretty interesting rivalry wherein they both thought themselves to be the best rapper alive but neither one was really embraced by the public as being that good (Game a little more than 50 but still).  I can’t think of a real Bird/Magic rivalry among current rappers.  Not sure either who would qualify in the “best rapper alive” category**.  Lil’ Wayne probably has the strongest claim to be the current top dog of the rap world; i would love to see a Wayne/Kanye beef except that both of them are just way to inconsistent and while they have their share of perfect lines, they are both close to tipping into “over 50% crap” as far as career stats***.  Rick Ross is really more associated with his lifestyle and his appearance than his rapping skills, and Drake is too much of a pussy for a real rivalry to develop to any satisfaction (also, in my opinion, not a good rapper, but a lot of people seem to disagree on that one).  Eminem erased himself from the face of the earth but he did some pretty good beefing back in the day, with Fred Durst, with his own mom, with his various sub-personas.
This is the best song on the record.  It’s really fun (it sounds a little bit like that Robin Thicke song actually, which makes me think probably Pharrell has a cowbell problem right now).
Jay once again gets around his self-imposed embargo on the word ‘bitch’ by calling out “Britney Bitch” in an equally good rapid fire all-references verse.  From a standpoint of flow definitely the best verse Jay has on the album, getting back to the kind of Das EFX or Spice One delivery that he was originally known for.
14. Jay Z Blue (prod. J-Roc & Timbaland)
The obligatory “ohmagawd I love my daughter” song starts with umm….a vocal sample from Mommy Dearest?  At least they didn’t actually use the “no more wire hangers” line.
Jay-Z captures a very particular modern paranoia regarding settling down, a fear that I’m sure plagues every happy family today:  all these other families are falling apart around us, and it seems like it can’t happen to our perfect family, but hey i thought it was impossible that x and y**** would get divorced but they did, so maybe we’re next and we won’t even see it coming!!!
Moreover, in Jay’s case this paranoia is amplified by two factors: the celebrity status of Jay’s nuptials and the accepted short shelf life of celebrity marriages, and the “vicious cycle” factor of Jay having grown up without his own father in the picture.
15. La Familia (prod. J-Roc & Timbaland)
Get it?  like, the mob.  But also, he literally just started a family.
It doesn’t change or go anywhere but this beat is ON FIRE and I sincerely hope I hear it swiped on a dozen mixtapes this summer.
Okay, that time he just straight up said “bitches”…did I make up the thing where he said he was not going to use that word anymore?  Because he sucks pretty bad at not saying bitch.
16. Nickels & Dimes (prod. Mike Dean)
Jay Z has been a successful rapper for SO MUCH LONGER than he was a drug dealer (if he ever was one), it is kind of amazing that he still devotes so much time to propping up his street credentials.   Of course he’d love you to believe that he is still the Tony Montana of the Eastern Seaboard and the FBI is tapping his phones.
Well, turns out they were tapping all of our phones.
*Guaranteed to be successful, guaranteed to include some dynamite moments, not exactly likely to end up on a lot of critic’s year-end lists.
** I think some of the most talented rappers alive are MF DOOM, Freddie Gibbs, Big K.R.I.T., Killer Mike, and both Ninja and Yolandi from Die Antwoord, but I also think the mantle of best rapper alive implies not only some great lyrical skills but a kind of larger-than-life persona and megastar status which none of the above possess.
***This applies only to Kanye’s rapping.  As a producer he’s better than 95% bangers all-time.
****Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, in my case.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images