Our man takes a track-by-track run through the new Jay-Z album to offer his first thoughts on one of the hip-hop events of the year
Holy Grail
It's the least surprising opening to this album possible: Justin Timberlake getting his Authentic Blues Face on over a thinly sketched femme fatale while portentous piano plays. Amusingly, this very serious verse culminates in a corny hashtag line that awkwardly crowbars sexual innuendo into the album's conspiracy-baiting title: "Sipping from your cup 'til it runneth over … Holy Grail." Timberlake has history here: his 2010 verse on Diddy Dirty Money's magnificent Shades found him stacking hashtags on hashtags, each cornier than the last – but it worked, because he was half deliberately creepy and half taking the piss out of the formula. On a song that strives so hard for sincerity, it's a clumsy way to burst the bubble.
Why so much Timberlake talk, when we're considering the opening song of a Jay-Z album? Because he steals the show, albeit not in a good way. Jay's own entrance is rote, his finger-wagging about fame an indication that he may have reached the Hollywood stage of his career and his Tyson reference in the first verse just makes you want to listen to Niggas in Paris instead. The nadir of the song is still to come, though: referencing Kurt Cobain is not an especially new device in rap, but this is the first time an artist has been so thuddingly obvious as to directly interpolate Smells Like Teen Spirit for a couple of bars.
Picasso Baby
There are plenty of moments on Magna Carta Holy Grail that recall past Jay-Z works, and the crunching bass and metallic synth shakes here are immediately reminiscent of 1998's So Ghetto (though the beat is actually a sped-up, but otherwise barely altered, sample of Adrian Younge's Sirens – one of two significant samples of the film composer on the album). It's no So Ghetto – what is? – but it's serviceable enough; the line "Vogueing on these niggas, champagne on my breath" means it immediately requires the video treatment, if only to see Jay-Z vogueing. (This would be way more subversive and boundary-pushing than his friend's trend of merely getting women to take their clothes off, obviously.)
Thematically, the Kanyeisation of Jay-Z continues as the mentor takes on ever more qualities of his protégé. "I'm an asshole," he declares in the third line before spending two verses juxtaposing high-art namedropping and poverty references, and a third complaining that he's been ill-treated. The final line seems crucial: "What's it gonna take … for y'all to see/ I'm the modern day Pablo Picasso, baby?" The song is obsession with fine art and great names as pure aspiration, not aesthetics: Jay-Z reels off names like Picasso, Rothko, Koons and Da Vinci not because they make sense as any kind of lineage but because he wants their canonical status to rub off on him. Hint, Jay: you're already canonical, but this kind of thing diminishes you.
Blue Ivy reference watch: two in two songs.
Tom Ford
Tumblr reference! Everyone cross that off your Magna Carta Bingo Sheet and do a shot. It's quite funny, though – Lord knows the Tumblr generation could do with more mockery. What's slightly disappointing is the beat: Timbaland's supposed return to form this year amounts to little more than pulling himself back from the dire abyss to merely retreading past glories, and the self-consciously minimal, sparse Tom Ford just sounds like a warmed-up Ayo Technology crossed with the recent hip-hop clapping trend.
FuckWithMeYouKnowIGotIt (feat. Rick Ross)
Again, Jay-Z's show is stolen – more than half of FuckWithMeYouKnowIGotIt is given over to Rick Ross, with the supposed lead artist entering only two-and-half minutes in. This is to its immense benefit, though. Ross, whose usual wheezy, galumphing elephant flow surely makes him the most average rapper ever to ascend to the hip-hop A-list, is on surprisingly effective form: over Boi-1da's backdrop of sinister, prowling bass, sirens and stuttering beats, Ross reduces himself to boasts as blank as slogans, with the yawning chasms between lines magnifying their impact. The simplicity is refreshing: unlike much of Magna Carta, FuckWithMeYouKnowIGotIt strives for nothing more than vague menace, and succeeds entirely on those terms. For his part, Jay-Z is an adequate guest on his own song.
Oceans (feat. Frank Ocean)
Oceans swishes forth like a red carpet rolling out: fanfares, drum rolls, synths that sound like curtains made of coins opening. It's the kind of thing we've heard from Jay-Z before, such as on the round-the-world hedonistic cruise of Girls, Girls, Girls. Here, though, it's about the darkness beneath the water as Frank Ocean draws a full circle between slavery boats and luxury yachts. When the song reaches its climax with a chorus of double-tracked vocals – Ocean's low-key sing-song voice set against a passionate falsetto – it's probably the sonic highlight of the album. But when Jay-Z shoehorns a Strange Fruit reference into the song – an echo of Kanye West's own recent misappropriation of that song on Blood on the Leaves – the song's foundations crumble somewhat beneath the weight of signifiers that Jay-Z doesn't bother to back up.
F.U.T.W.
"Just let me be great!" demands Jay-Z to open what sounds like an uninspired out-take from Vol. 3 … Life & Times Of S Carter. Timbaland wheels out his rippling xylophone preset for the 1000th time in his career, Jay-Z devotes his attention to justifying his wealth for what feels like the thousandth time on this album. It's one of the reasons it's starting to drag: whereas Kanye West's Yeezus was certainly flawed, it was a statement of intent that kept me interested in West as an artist; it was pushing, if not forward exactly, then at least somewhere. But there's little on Magna Carta that I haven't heard from Jay-Z before. On Oceans, he rapped: "Welcome to my magnum opus" – a hollow boast, given that barely anything Jay-Z's done since 2004 stands up next to the music he made in his prime. It's unclear so far whether he's aware that the Magna Carta was a document forced on English kings to limit their power – but this is certainly an album that's making the case for this king of rap to cede some status to some of his hungrier successors-in-waiting.
Somewhere In America
The sample this is based on is blues musician Johnny "Guitar" Watson's Gangster of Love, but it's sped up and tweaked sufficiently that it brings to mind jazz instead – in fact, what it sounds like is an out-take from The Great Gatsby soundtrack (for which Jay-Z was the executive producer). It pootles along pleasantly if unremarkably – the realisation that this album is Dad Rap in the same way that Daft Punk's Random Access Memories was Dad Dance is strongly dawning now as Jay-Z bitches about the internet and witters on about Frank Sinatra yet again. In light of this, the track takes a slightly horrifying turn as its last third is given over to Jay-Z repeating: "Twerk, Miley, twerk!" Whether it's proud statement that rap is now so mainstream that even former Disney girls do hip-hop dances (as though Cyrus was the first to signify growing up in this manner) or a mockery of Cyrus's clumsy appropriation, or simply leering, there is nothing good about this.
Crown
"Bitch asked if I was God – fuck I'm supposed to say, no?" Truly Jay-Z is the sensible dad trying to keep up with Kanye's loose-cannon son. Unfortunately, genuine menace has never been his strong point: Jay-Z's voice has always been so matter-of-fact, it's hard to imagine him cutting loose in the vocal booth (as Kanye does on Yeezus), let alone delivering the same quiet chills as, say, long-underrated Texan rapper Trae Tha Truth. Jay-Z's attempts to snarl here don't fall quite as flat as his execrable Monster verse, but it still feels like second-hand paranoia, the kind of thing he's decided a Serious Artist should feel. Interestingly, both Kanye and Jay-Z seem to think that extra gravitas will be gained from some appropriation of that Jamaican gothic strain of reggae, with Sizzla's pleading lament Solid as a Rock snapped up here. It's too obvious a tactic to take seriously, though.
Heaven
The first couple of seconds start off like this song is going to be Heart of the City (Ain't No Love) – my favourite Jay-Z song – and my own heart sings. Instead of that, though, we get tedious ruminations on religion to no discernible coherent conclusion. Jay-Z plays irritatingly coy with conspiracy theories: he repudiates the old illuminati canard, but it's rather disingenuous given, for example, the title of this album. Worse than that is the sheer, tired lack of energy on display: you'd think that rapping about religion and the devil might fire any artist up, but Heaven is thoroughly rote.
Worse even that that is the moment when Jay-Z starts rapping Losing My Religion, which is also the moment I had to briefly pause the album, stare sadly out of the window and pour one out for the artist he used to be. Both this and the Smells Like Teen Spirit interpolation earlier are, however, manifestations of the same impulse seen on Picasso Baby: Nirvana and REM are canonical artists, and thus Jay-Z feels them worthy of curation here. It's a rather depressing way to look at the world, and it's grim to actually hear.
Versus
The best beat on the album so far – one of the first with any energy at all – and Jay-Z's most relaxed, playful verse are given over to a 50-second interlude. Great. "Your last shit ain't better than my first shit" – are you rapping to yourself in the mirror, Jay?
Part II (On the Run) (feat. Beyoncé)
Because what the world was clamouring from its leading power couple was a reprise of their first ever collaboration, the rightly long-forgotten '03 Bonnie & Clyde. That's not actually a joke: this aimless mid-tempo really does merely pick up where that minor single left off a decade ago, sonically and thematically, except this time it's not a young dumb romantic fantasy but role play to spice up a middle-aged couple's marriage. And Beyoncé, acknowledging your song is a cliché in the opening lines doesn't make it less of one. On the other hand, you do sound lovely in this serenely drifting mode you rarely employ.
Beach Is Better
The first instant rewind moment on Magna Carta. Mike Will Made It is the hottest producer around right now for good reason, and he knocks one of his biggest commissions yet out of the park. A dystopian police helicopter digital buzz and a twisting wormhole of bass explode into chimes and gunfire rhythms, which then explode into actual explosions. Even a Jay-Z long past his prime can't screw it up.
Sadly, it seems Jay-Z didn't agree, as this – again – is merely a sub-minute interlude. Sigh.
BBC (feat. Nas, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell, Swizz Beatz & Timbaland)
House party time: all of Jay-Z's famous musician friends crowd into a room and jam along to Pharrell's trademark handclaps and piano. Its casual air means it's thoroughly likeable – again, not trying too hard pays dividends on an album which largely does try to second-guess itself too much – but it also makes it feel like a wasted opportunity: this all-star collaboration deserves more than an underwritten hook, Beyoncé and Timberlake lost in the mix and Jay-Z being pleased with himself to a quite unseemly extent for a six-years-late white girl/Britney reference. It's not dissimilar in sound to Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, also produced by Pharrell – but there's a definite reason why that catapulted an artist hitherto unknown outside of R&B circles to No 1 worldwide, and this is destined to remain a deep cut on one of Jay-Z's most unremarkable albums.
Jay-Z Blue
You know it was coming: the inevitable song about fatherhood. There are acoustic guitars. There are strings. There is a Pampers/Hamptons rhyme. There is the line "Fuck joint custody, I need a joint right now." There are Jay-Z's own daddy issues. It's all very #introspective and #selfloathing and #midlifecrisis and massively clichéd and boring.
La Familia
Timbaland exhumes another rejected stutter-beat from 1999 to accompany Jay-Z reminiscing about when he actually had something to say; the stilted flow that's bedevilled his albums for years is in full effect, and the general effect is like an elderly man in a rocking chair rambling endlessly on to his grandkids. From Dad Rap to Grandad Rap within the space of an album that is beginning to make me feel as though I, too, have aged as much as that.
Nickels and Dimes
An odd little closer that addresses, of all things, Harry Belafonte's charge that Jay-Z and Beyoncé don't do enough for charity. It's interesting in that, in a reversion of the usual celebrity apology narrative, what is ostensibly a defiant self-justification comes across as a desire to make amends with Jay-Z's elders thanks to its reflective air – and the fact that he's acknowledging and discussing the matter at all. It's a strangely subdued way to close the album – but then, it's been a strangely subdued album.
