The Black Album

11/07/2003 8:00 PM, LAUNCH
Dan Leroy

The easiest way for an artist to get everyone to focus on his legacy is by threatening to pull the plug. And naturally, on his alleged final album, Jay-Z offers a few (hundred) helpful suggestions about his overall place in the hip-hop world he's dominated since the mid-'90s. ("I'm supposed to be number one on everybody's list/We'll see what happens when I no longer exist," he sniffs on "What More Can I Say.") But the measure of his greatness is that Jigga can essentially offer one long verse of you'll-be-sorry-when-I'm-gone, and still keep you hanging on every word.

That owes something to the killer production, of course--the constant among the varying strains of beat-making represented here, whether it be the towering sculptures Kayne West and Just Blaze craft from classic, brassy soul; Eminem's G-Funk melodrama "Moment of Clarity"; or the misogynistic "99 Problems," which finds Rick Rubin returning to the metallic thump he pioneered 20 years ago. The sounds are epic, Herculean hip-hop. Jay-Z, however, looms even larger throughout.

There are better storytellers, there are better battle rappers, there are undoubtedly rhymers with more on their minds. But there isn't a better MC around, if you're talking about the art of sheer mic domination. His alchemy of autobiography into punchy poetry, and the conversational ease with which he delivers it, from "Dec. 4" onwards, is simply flawless; if his best subject is still himself, so be it. After he spends a little time "somewhere nice/where no mosquitoes at," as he promises in "My 1st Song," the bluesy ramble that closes The Black Album, Jay-Z will undoubtedly begin plotting his comeback. The loss to hip-hop would be tremendous if he doesn't.