Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

All eyes on him: Rapper Jay-Z at a concert to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his first album, Reasonable Doubt, in New York on June 25, 2006. (Scott Gries/Getty Images)

In the 2004 video for 99 Problems, from Shawn (Jay-Z) Carter’s The Black Album, the world’s most famous rapper — then worth an estimated $300 million US — is gunned down on his hometown streets of Brooklyn, N.Y. The death came in due time. Jay-Z, the character, had said and done it all — seven solo albums in eight years, global sales topping 33 million units — and thus lost his reason for being.

More than half of The Black Album’s tracks addressed its maker’s exit plan: “They say they never really miss you ’til you dead or you gone / So on that note I’m leaving after this song” (December 4th); “I’m supposed to be number one on everybody list / We’ll see what happens when I no longer exist” (What More Can I Say).

Quitting was Jay-Z’s means to join his late, great peers — Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, gangsta stars made icons by their unsolved killings in 1996 and ’97 — in receiving eternal, near-universal love from hip hop’s masses. (Real-life death was never an option. It’s simple to imagine the MC decades from now — Grey-Z — waving a cheque towards the Reaper, offering any price to extend his time.) Yes, the retirement of Jay-Z would bring the rebirth of Shawn Carter, the co-founder and co-owner of rap’s Roc-A-Fella empire: built from scratch in the mid-’90s, after the major labels passed on Reasonable Doubt, the rapper’s epic 1996 debut. In the decade since, Carter progressed from reformed drug dealer (his lyrics teem with references to his illicit past) to self-made music mogul who’d outgrown the limits of a recording career.

Seven months after his video murder, Hov (another Carter moniker; his play on Jehovah) released Fade to Black, a feature documentary about his so-called farewell concert. (Many more performances have followed since. Regardless, the film should be required viewing for Showmanship 101. It is — he is — outstanding.) Then, two Decembers ago, Jay-Z and his longtime business partners, Damon Dash and Kareem Burke, sold their stake in Roc-A-Fella to Def Jam Records — the big poppa of hip-hop labels — for a tidy $10 million US.

As part of the deal, Jay (even now, only his mother calls him Shawn) would continue to run the Roc, shedding Dash and Burke in the process. And he accepted an offer to become Def Jam’s president and CEO, a power play that would do Gordon Gekko proud. No matter the name, the new Jay-Z was strictly business, a shark who would rather swim in boardrooms than recording booths.

(Universal Music Group)

So much for that plan. Kingdom Come is the 37-year-old MC’s return to hip hop’s trenches. Jay announced the album this mid-September — from revelation to retail in nine-and-a-half weeks, a lightning strike in music industry scheduling — though he has spent the last year preparing its way. Mr. President’s executive functions have included umpteen guest appearances on other rappers’ songs, a European concert tour and a public reconciliation with his arch lyrical foe, Nas. “It was the worst retirement, maybe, in history,” Hov told Entertainment Weekly for the late-summer cover story that made his comeback official.

“As you see I can’t leave, so I do love you / But I’m just a hustler disguised as a rapper / In fact, you can’t fit this hustle inside of a wrapper,” Jay-Z raps on The Prelude, Kingdom Come’s opening song. And how is his unretirement album? Less good than most of his others. KC sounds better than The Blueprint²: The Gift and the Curse, his bloated, double-disc 2002 release — but it’s no match for Reasonable Doubt or the first Blueprint (2001).

I suspect Jay-Z knows that. And I suspect he’s OK with it. “The maturation of Jay-Zeezy,” he intones near the beginning of 30 Something, a midtempo, swinging production by Dr. Dre. The rapper, he wants us to know, has outgrown the brash, beyond-the-law street tough of his past releases. Young Hov is grown up now, with a softer, subtler flow than before:

Thirty’s the new 20, n----, I’m on fire still.
These young boys is like fire drills,
False alarms. The next Don,
He ain’t got it. To the next one,
Young, I’m still here.

True to past form, Kingdom Come is packed with the best super-producers that money can hire: Dre handles four tracks (and helms the entire album’s mixing); Just Blaze takes three; Kanye West, the Neptunes and Swizz Beatz each make an appearance. Most of the album’s beats share a low-key intensity, like Jay himself.

The rapper’s technique remains diamond-chiselled — he’s renowned for recording his songs from memory — but he has tempered its application enough to turn off hip hop’s youngest generation of fans. Attracting teen and 20-something listeners would have meant counterattacking Cam’ron, the Game and other MCs who have dissed Jay-Z (most memorably, for wearing sandals) since his retirement. Instead, he ignores them — or at least eschews naming names in the rare moments when he sounds exercised.

The dazzling duo: Jay-Z and girlfriend Beyonce Knowles performing onstage in New York. (Scott Gries/Getty Images)

Also, the kids would have expected Jay to share his microphone with the likes of Lil’ Wayne and Young Jeezy — his heirs-in-waiting, the rugged and raw superstars of the near future. He declined, however, to invite any rappers to join him on Kingdom Come. Instead, Usher and the Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams — both high-register singers — guest star on Anything; Hov’s girlfriend, the pop superstar Beyoncé, sings Hollywood’s chorus. R&B crooner Ne-Yo delivers about half of Minority Report, Jay-Z’s underwhelming reflection on Hurricane Katrina. (The effort is nonetheless refreshing, considering that his favourite topic has always been himself.) It’s a lot of soft touches for a man who made himself rich by being hard.

At least the album is honest. The truth is, the 21st-century Shawn Carter has less in common with his old friend Biggie than he does with Sean (Diddy) Combs, Smalls’s former label boss — and Hov’s current rival in clothing stores, where Diddy’s fashion line, Sean John, competes with Jay-Z’s Rocawear for multi-million-dollar sales. His lifestyle change is obvious in the video for Kingdom Come’s lead single, Show Me What You Got, with its Really Big Pimpin’ homage to James Bond films. Every frame looks like a million bucks, and Jay seems pleased to spend it. It’s unfortunate, though, that the full effect misses Bond, and winds up feeling very Gats-Beezy.

Kingdom Come’s lone sonic risk comes at its close. It’s a song called Beach Chair, co-produced by and featuring vocals from Chris (Coldplay) Martin. But what’s intended as yet another brooding goodbye (“My physical’s a shell, so when I say farewell / My soul will find an even higher plane to dwell”) instead resembles, well, Coldplay. The track’s detachment never breaks; there’s no eureka moment to explain why Jay-Z felt so compelled to make it, or the rest of Kingdom Come. Instead, there’s just his girlfriend’s question, hanging above Martin’s production: “Are you happy, Hov?”

Kingdom Come is available in stores on Nov. 21.

Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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