I wondered how often he reflected on having stabbed Lance “Un” Rivera, and how the incident nearly derailed his career. I wondered how selling dope to people he loved may have left him with an inescapable sense of trauma. For years, I wondered how the trauma of shooting his brother, as he detailed on 1997’s “You Must Love Me,” followed him into rare heights of superstardom. As Jay’s confessions run deep, the album is perhaps best experienced solo. Speakers were moved outside the Sprint store where the session was to be held, ostensibly so the people stretching to the next block near a Whole Foods grocery store could hear the album. The one I attended, in Silver Spring, Maryland, was shut down by police for capacity reasons before the first song could be played. Sponsored listening parties for the album littered cities around the country. And since he started from the bottom, so to speak, another valid concern is: Does JAY-Z even still have it anymore? He also (with respect to the Obamas), makes up half of one of the most high-profile relationships in America, and he’s one of the few people in the world with direct lines to Jordan, Obama and LeBron James. The album itself bookends a monumental June 2017 for Shawn Carter: Kevin Durant, a flagship client of his Roc Nation Sports agency, captured his first NBA championship, and JAY himself was inducted, with a speech from President Barack Obama, into the Songwriters Hall of Fame - the first rapper to be so honored. His business ventures have helped redefine the image of what long-term success looks like in America’s most influential and most critiqued music culture. Little was he aware the same would happen to him a year later.īefore the release of 4:44, a legit critique of JAY himself was, What could he possibly have to talk about that would be beneficial to rap in 2017? He’s one of the wealthiest men on the planet, with a portfolio that shows no signs of slowing. “Wow,” was the only word a stunned JAY-Z could mutter as he watched Bryant further ascend toward immortality. But still, the game had to be inspirational. JAY certainly didn’t need a great album to call it a career on - in the same way Bryant didn’t need a historic game to cement his stature among basketball’s all-time greats. But on that spring 2016 night in downtown Los Angeles, JAY witnessed a peer, one of the few in America who understands what it’s like to be that famous for that long, walk away from the game he changed in that manner. and Michael Jordan, to carve their own places in history. Both JAY and Bryant escaped the shadows of their larger-than-life predecessors, The Notorious B.I.G. A day later, the Charlotte Hornets drafted a 17-year-old Bryant, only to send him to Los Angeles in return for Vlade Divac. Reasonable Doubt, the corner-boy manifesto and classic hip-hop debut, arrived on June 25, 1996. But it spared JAY-Z.īryant and JAY, despite nine years separating them, came into the public’s eye together.
Rap was never given the chance to heal from those wounds - Biggie, Tupac - it helped create. With his wife, Beyoncé, and his sister-in-law, Solange, using their last albums for their most personal work, it’s no surprise 4:44 unmasks itself as JAY at his emotional and creative zenith. The desire has been for him to curb the flaunting of luxuries and come with the real on what it’s like to be one of the most successful people in the world - and also one of its most haunted.īut the writing had been on the wall. It’s the project fans and critics have clamored for, for years: the authentic Jay Z. Off the rip, though, this is the greatest rapper of all time stripping himself down to essentials. Yet, where 4:44 will land in the rankings of JAY-Z’s catalog is a question better left for time. But in the end it is JAY’s inward glimpse of himself - the man he was, the man he’s become, the man he grew to partially hate - that separates this album from his previous bodies of work. Without No I.D.’s soulful backdrops (inspired by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Kool & The Gang and more), 4:44 might lack the emotional connection it not only thrives on but quite literally survives on. No I.D.’s music is more than just “beats,” or instrumentals. Ernest “No I.D.” Wilson, who produced JAY’s 2009 “ Run This Town” and “ Death of Autotune,” as well as 2007’s “ Success,” among others, is the album’s lone producer, and he is irreplaceable. The 10-track 4:44 is the most emotionally taxing project of JAY’s ( he’s back to all caps) career. But for one night, the music universe revolved around JAY-Z, the sport’s finest elder statesman, with the release of his 13th studio album, 4:44.