Tuesday's Recommended Release

Last year when Jay-Z made his "triumphant" comeback from a terribly short lived "retirement", people received his Kingdom Come with mixed results. On this site I applauded Jay's comeback album, but as time wore on I went to it less and less as the rhymes on the album became stale and the beats were trumped by a few artists here and there that seemed to have more energy for the game then President Jay did. Now Jay-Z is looking to the movies to revitalize his rap career, using the gang life found in the new Russel Crowe, Denzel Washington film American Gangster as inspiration even though he already lived a similar life to what is portrayed in the film. This cinematic muse though has brought Jay back to what he does best, instead of rhyming about living the high life running a successful corporation, Jay is once again talking about the streets and the struggle that people are continuing to live out there.

Over the course of the fifteen tracks on American Gangster you can hear a new found hop to Jay's step, providing much better lyrics, greatly improved flows, and a solid assortment of beats on each track. Even though he's rapping about an imaginary gangster, Jay-Z still culls from his own life, of living in the projects and dealing drugs before finally making it, mixing it with brief audio pieces from the movie of the same name, and mixing it all with contemporary references. It's Jay the way we expect him to be, not quite Reasonable Doubt but certainly a marked improvement from Kingdom.

At times Jay drops the ball here, seems a little uninspired, but then just as quickly as he fades he surges back with a tricked out flow that few rappers could ever imagine attempting. And that's really what we look for from Jay-Z, intelligent rhymes, crazy mixed up flows like a modern Ginsesburg throwing classic poetry on it's head with his crazy verses. There's songs that are sure to be blaring from cars driving through the cold air of the coming winter, tracks that will be mixed and re-mixed and played in every sweaty club you may ever step foot in, but none of that stands up to the spots where Jay just lets go, remembers his background, and spits like old school Jay would.

Obviously, this album is not Jay-Z's finest hour, but it's still an excellent album, better then 96.2% of the rap albums that were released this year, and certainly fitting for a place in a slew of year end lists. Like Jordan, Jay-Z has now come back from retirement twice; but unlike Jordan, Jay's second crack at coming back is looking way more successful then his first.
Jay-Z - "No Hook"
Jay-Z - "Say Hello"

Also Released Today:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday's Links:
- Loose Record has a little alone time with Adam Baker of The Annuals.
- Gothamist plays dislexic 21 questions with Tokyo Police Club.
- Largehearted Boy posts his weekly "Try It Before You Buy It" with a slew of newly released albums being streamed. Next week I will be starting a column called "Check It Out Before Check Out!". Kidding of course.