JAY-Z – BLACK ALBUM - CD •

UPC: 602498611210 Label: DEF JAM Format: CDRelease Date: November 14, 2003In stock items ship within 48 hours Jay-Z may be some kind of genius, but he still tends to alternate near-perfect records with half-baked stopgaps. So, after 2002's shoddy The Blueprint 2, The Black Album predictably finds him back at the top of everyone's game. Jay remains the Henny Youngman of rap, dropping numbingly dumb couplets ("I'm from the murder capital/ Where we murder for capital") among the jewels ("My name Hov/ H-to-the-o-v/ I used to move snowflakes/ By the o-z") until you don't know what's what. The other part of his genius is that he's a trackmaster, gerrymandering the hottest beats by the hottest producers, always. (Mercenary capitalism equals aesthetics here.) Jay introduces new producers on the back of marquee names, who this time include Timbaland, the Neptunes, Eminem, and-sure to excite the older heads and baffle the kids-Rick Rubin. (If you're old hat, you're not on a Jay-Z album-just ask