Given his self-promoted position as the saviour of hip-hop, Afro American culture and the third world’s water supply, you’d have thought that Jay Z would come out of retirement with something of a killer. What we get instead is a very run of the mill effort, weighed down with a ton of busy samples and the usual tired bravado. Kanye won’t be losing any sleep.
Jay Z is, almost effortlessly, a star. After the opening few numbers, all he has to do is wander out to edge of the stage and stare out into the crowd for the whole place to go apeshit
If this album really does mark the fading to black of one of hip-hop’s true heavyweights then at least we can take some consolation in the fact that the self-styled ‘Michael Jordan of rap’ has gone out at the top of his game.
