On September 11, 2001, the 21st century was born on some great and horrendous, fire and brimstone shit; to the mother of all terrorist attacks and to a father who could not fix what was too real. The world watched as the great Western ideal (read: liberty) took a devastating blow. America watched as its chickens came home to roost, all in the name of martyrdom and 70 virgins. And New York City watched as its own famed skyline burned. The heavens may have been silent (per John Updike), but the king of the charred apple was restless. So he presented us with a gift to assuage this seemingly omnipresent and omniscient curse -- a soundtrack for our newly conceived post-postmodern world. But, really, a blueprint that would become as ubiquitous as it was soulful, and as essential as it was bellicose. The ruler was back, just when he was most needed.
Jay-Z, it would turn out, was the perfect character to lead us into such uncharted territory -- sublime in cinemascope (“nightmare ballet”) but jarringly muted (an endless, collective gasp). Equally gifted and flawed, guilty and innocent, innovative and nostalgic, Jigga and Mr. Carter, Hova and man, his artistic career was at a crossroads on some real Viktor Turner Liminality shit. With two too many volumes of exhausted, generic productions that failed to capture either the hard knocks or times of one S. Carter, the fall was complete. A sundry of belled and whistled Jermaine Dupri and Irv Gotti beats do not a distinctly-NYC DJ Premier sparse, ambient sample make. Far too many nepotistic Roc overtures and undercutting guest appearances will also cramp an artist like Jay-Z. Seven Memphis Bleek appearances on The Dynasty, really!? But in a post-Biggie/Pac world, it was much easier to forgive one of hip-hop’s remaining -- even if fallen -- geniuses, especially when he provided essential, much needed catharsis. So Jay-Z (again) rose on cathartic “pity and terror” (per Aristotle), which he gifted to America via his timely masterpiece, The Blueprint.
What better place is there to express and abandon pity, sorrow, and regret than Church? Jay-Z did just that, as he says on “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love)": let’s "take ‘em to Church." To be accurate, it was Jay-Z’s stable of Roc producers, particularly Kanye West and Just Blaze (who would each become household names via their work on The Blueprint) who took ‘em to Church by infusing the album with vintage soul samples that had been largely abandoned in the world of hip-hop. As Exclaim magazine's Del F. Cowie explains, this “distinctive take on using sped-up soul vocal samples, a technique notably used by Wu-Tang Clan’s the RZA, proved influential, spawning a host of imitators. In the process, the reign of the digitally cold keyboard-driven production style was dislodged as the predominant sound emanating from hip-hop’s birthplace.” This “Laputan” style of production, with one inward eye on the soul and one skyward eye on the past, is best showcased on both West’s aforementioned “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love)” and Blaze’s “Song Cry.” Each producer subsumes disparate techniques and influences, but share the crucial quality of poignant heartache in their aesthetics. And, even more crucially in 2001, the “Heart of the City” became the Twin Towers (there “Ain’t No Love” in terrorism), and the “Song” did not “Cry” alone, for America wept as well.
But what happens after a Nation has shed its last tear? You fight -- for yourself, your neighbor, your country, and your ideals. This pugnacity is precisely the spirit that Jay-Z conveys throughout The Blueprint. Stripped away is the corroding armor, the sub-par guest spots and the tedious Roc-inspired boasts. What’s left is an exposed Jay-Z: hustla’, battler, renegade; you can feel the streets pulsating through every bar. Nowhere is Jay-Z’s reign of terror more obvious than on "Takeover," the caustic dis-track. Over a strident bass line, a baleful vocal sample, and a guitar riff, Jay-Z attacks his rivals, most notably Nas, for accusing him of hip-hop’s most heinous sin: homosexuality. (“H to the izzo, M to the izzo”): “Went from Nasty Nas to Esco’s trash/ Had a spark when you started, but now you’re just garbage/ Fell from top-ten to not mentioned at all/ ‘till your bodyguard’s ‘Oochie Wally’ verse better than yours.” His boastful menacing constitutes most of the album, from his pithy “Sure I do” retort, to a questioning “You don’t know what you do to me” Blaze sample, to his meta-apostolic rants on “Hola Hovita;” this is an artist at his most vulnerable and therefore egotistical (read: defence mechanism). Jay-Z did (read: fought) what America was not yet prepared to do.
The album winds down with the disparate, Eminem-assisted “Renegade,” on which Jay-Z, like a victorious presidential candidate, recounts his escape from a nature-less and nurture-less past: “My pops left me an orphan, my momma wasn’t home/ Could not stress to me I wasn’t grown; ‘specially on nights/ I brought somethin’ home to quiet the stomach rumblings/ My demeanor: thirty years my senior/ My childhood didn’t mean much, only raisin green up/ Raisin’ my fingers to critics; raisin’ my head to the sky/ Big I did it, multi before I die.” A sincere and imaginative culmination, The Blueprint is Jay-Z's best album. He largely leaves behind the tired world of Mafioso-influenced raps and production that dominated his other great album, Reasonable Doubt, creating his own style and sound. He thereby escapes the immense shadow of his friend, Biggie Smalls.
The Blueprint is not only Jay-Z’s greatest album, it's also among the most important American albums of this century. It defined the era. Jay-Z always had a golden ear for progressive production, having popularized the Neptune sound and Timbo’s Eastern-influenced beats; he has an equally clever and biting tongue, but on The Blueprint, he outdid himself in all areas, positing new sounds and ideas that still dominate hip-hop and pop music today. While it's true that art cannot fight a war or physically heal wounds, it can mimic and personify the world that birthed it for all to see, remember, and ultimately learn from -- in this case, pity with terror, healing after hellfire, and wisdom from war. When his music, city, and country fell, Jay-Z and America rose together. In the end, that is the everlasting blueprint of America as a nation and the dream it birthed.
