Review Summary: Ehhhh, most of this album is both post-808 Kanye and post-Retirement Jay-Z on auto-pilot
Jay-Z managed to do what is considered impossible in the hip hop world: he managed to gain praise from the hip hop elite and the mainstream rap audience. It’s a shame how the mighty have fallen indeed, as The Blueprint 3 sees Jay-Z at a point of weakness, and instead of following his own path, allows Kanye West to take him on the synth-ridden road to hip hop success and absolute boredom, which ultimately will disappoint long-time Jay-Z fans.
Jay sure starts things off on the right foot on The Blueprint 3, giving us “What We Talkin Bout”, a track that removes any of that Reasonable Doubt/ Vol.1-3 deja vu that listeners felt on America Gangster, with Jay’s arrogance being spit with a new flow and a futuristic instrumental that manage to both stand out and allow shine for Jay-Z. Both “D.O.A.” and “Thank You”, although both good, try their damnedest to spit on this change, with “D.O.A.” having a exciting albeit messy oriental feeling, while “Thank You” invokes Jay’s highly praised conversational flow and runs with it over a beat that would nigh unflowable any other way.
Good enough, right? But as soon as you make it to “Run This Town” and “Empire State of Mind”, the album's problems become uncomfortably clear; despite a lot of the trying of new things, most of these things have already been done by others of the mainstream, and much better. Even at this point, there are positives, such as the brand-dropping “Venus vs. Mars” and the driving-like-Nascar-except-not-just-turning-left guitar of “Run This Town”, but after “D.O.A.”, none of the songs as a whole work. To use the same song once again as an example, “Venus Vs. Mars” suffers from Jay-Z’s flow, which attempts to be slick, dirty, confident, and lackadaisical all at the same time and fails at all of them, while Jay’s lyrics on “Run This Town” are some of the most amateurish that he’s ever written.
And these tracks are mediocre, but they don’t even match how awful most of the album is. This brings up the main problems overall; that Jay-Z’s flow is getting too cocky for no reason, taking a lack of caring for how loud his voice gets like his annoying former protégé Memphis Bleak, while his lyricism is becoming boring like his other former protégé Beanie Sigel. Not only that, but this mostly Kanye-driven soundtrack seems to indulge more of Kanye West’s taste buds than Jay’s own, with Jay sounding uncomfortable with a producer he’s worked with for years. As well as all that the majority of the album, which a lot of the time sounds so washed down and processed it might as well have been made entirely of studio musicians, just feels unnatural and that's just, for a lack of better term, wack.
I have confidence that Jay-Z’s album after this will soar above the clouds. It may evoke that déj* vu feeling that I get when I listen to American Gangster, but damn it, it will still be better than this. Having a post-808 Kanye West produce this was a mistake, as it sounds lazily danceable, with production that is almost as weak as that of Common’s dance record Universal Mind Control. The only thing that’s better is that this actually has good songs. Download the first three songs and approach “Venus vs. Mars” and “Run This Town” with caution, but the rest of the album is an embarrassment to Hova's career.
