Jay-z - Kingdom Come
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observer.guardian.co.uk Rating: 0
'In music and hip hop you need events to happen to keep the excitement going,' he told me in the studio just over a month ago, as he was putting the finishing touches to the record. 'I believe at this point hip hop needs albums that are events. It needs another Dre album, it needs another Eminem album, it needs a Jay-Z album. I just believe that.'The first couple of weeks in the studio I was just sitting around and really doing nothing and then one week everything just came rushing back. I guess it's like everything if you take a lay off - like a basketball player. You've got to get match fit.'Lead single 'Show Me What You Got' failed to blow fans away when it was leaked on the web, but he clearly did get into the swim of things pretty quickly. The irregular flows, the lyrical agility and the ability to move swiftly through a subject that can be touchingly personal or a big party tune - it's all here.On the Dr Dre-produced 'Lost Ones' he raps about relationship problems he may (or may not) have had with his girlfriend, Beyonce Knowles: 'Me my time in this army is served/ So I have to allow she her time to serve/ The time's now for her/ In time she'll mature/ And maybe we can be we again like we were.' He raps, too, about the terrible pain of losing his nephew, Colleek Luckie, in a car accident, involving the Chrysler Jay bought him to mark his high school graduation.Similarly, 'All Grown Up' sees the rapper talk about what it means to hit your late thirties, a rich, successful man and to look back at where you've come from - in Jay's case, the projects in Brooklyn. It's not a showy song, rather there's a note of very real wonder at how his life has developed and an acknowledgement that, as he turns 37 next month, the maturity he has found in his business life must also be seen in his personal and musical life too.He told me that he felt politics was what was missing from hip hop; that Kanye West was the closest thing to a mainstream political rapper. Another Dre-produced song, 'Minority Report', goes some way to redressing the balance. It features a hook from R&B star Ne-Yo, rain sound effects, and is punctuated by news reports from Katrina-hit New Orleans.Perhaps the album's biggest surprise, however, is 'Beach Chair', the track produced by Jay-Z's new best friend Chris Martin, whose voice floats over the song. As anyone who caught Martin's...
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