American Gangster
Following a false retirement (*The Black Album*) and a rocky return (*Kingdom Come*), *American Gangster* posed the question: How can an artist defined by struggle still make his music feel urgent after the struggle is over? At times, the pose here—hard, hustling—felt like a return to Jay\'s iconic 1996 debut, *Reasonable Doubt*, a survey of the kingpin myths he’d spent a decade perfecting. The wordplay was back, and so was the storytelling—from naïve rise (“American Dreamin’”) to bitter regret (“Fallin’”), or, as Jay framed it on “Roc Boys,” “black superhero music.” But most telling was “Ignorant Sh\*t,” a rebuke to critics that doubled as a meditation on the mixed signals given to black entertainers: Do you want the thinker, or do you want the thug? Here, he synthesized both.
Inspired by the Ridley Scott crime epic, Jay-Z's quickly-made drug kingpin record isn't as conceptually tight as he'd have liked, but it rips Jay out of the royal materialistic old-man haze that ruined Kingdom Come and recalls the titanic, invincible snarl that made him great in the first place.
Even when he’s trying to raise consciousness, Jay-Z doesn’t really have any valid solutions.
"This is black superhero music right here, baby!" It's a tossed off line, just something that shows up while Jay-Z is riffing at the end of American...
Jay-Z - American Gangster review: Hova's back, and he's made one of the best albums of his career.