I don't think RD needs to be explained/defended either but fuck it, I'm bored:
I actually liked Noz's post even if I disagreed with some of his points. I do, however, wonder if there's a little strawman-ism being put up here. To me, the majority of people don't automatically assume that RD = "classic." I think "Blueprint" tends to get that label quicker, especially for younger listeners who only discovered RD retroactively and don't find it quite as refined as Jay's later albums.
I also don't think it's that iconoclastic to declare that "Vol 3" is Jay's best album - I think a lot of people said that after "Vol 3" dropped and while some folks retuned their scale post-"Blueprint" I would assume a lot of folks still ride for "Vol 3" as his best effort.
Back to RD: I think what makes this album special is that it's really one of the first post-94 albums that understands how previous efforts like "Ready to Die," "Illmatic," "The Infamous" and "Enter the Wu-Tang" changed the proverbial game and is both a challenge and dialogue with that new paradigm. It's a player/gangsta album that adroitly balances a few key styles - the radio hit for ladies, the club hit, the street anthems - yet, to me at least, never feels overly calculated or contrived. I know that latter point is quite open to debate but seriously, compare RD with "It Was Written." As Ego Trip pointed out back in the day and as Noz alludes to in his post, ITW simply tries too hard whereas one could suggest that RD is similarly strategic as a commercial effort but Jay is more convincing, seems more effortless in creating his persona.
On a far simpler level, dude just dropped a lot of great songs on that album. I don't love all of them, but to me, this was a relatively filler-free effort. Personally, I never cared that much for "22s" and by the time this album dropped, I was already tired of both "Dead Presidents II" and "Ain't No Ni99a" (though I appreciate that both were vital to helping get the album made) but shit, "Politics as Usual"? "Brooklyn's Finest?" "Feelin It"? "D'Evils"? "Can I Live"? Et. al.
And I dare...DARE anybody to knock the production on here. Clark Kent + Primo + Ski = unfadeable.
Oh I don't just like Vol. 3 because I think its 'iconoclastic' of a choice or some shit, I just think its a better example of what music made Jay-Z Jay-Z. Reasonable Doubt sounds too trapped in its time, too much a product of the era rather than the artist compared to shit that would follow; while Illmatic defines its era, RD just seems like an afterthought, a prelude to a bunch of new styles. Plenty of the beats on it are nice and low key, but their charm is in their low-key nature; I kind of love this album if I think about it on its own terms, a low-key pre-classic, an exciting look at a dude just beginning to form the style that would define him. Like how Hua Hsu says Nas dropped 'fully formed,' Jay was taking years, a decade to develop his style.
If I think of it as a CLASSIC or Jay-Z's defining album or something it seems unable to do anything but fall short. I don't think a single song on this album would hit my top ten Jay-Z tracks.[/b] No matter how consistent it is. "So Ghetto"'s beat is better than "D'Evils" as far as Premier goes.
Its a very good debut, but to me a good comparison point is T.I.'s "I'm Serious" rather than Illmatic or Ready to Die. I don't think RD's 'classic status' needs to be defended at all, but if people are gonna step up on some 'i'm right, you're wrong' shit I think they should bring something to the table. In the 'real world' I know more people who'll ride for mid-period Jay (and even more who will ride for later Jay) but all rap 'heads' go on about how RD is his best album and honestly I think its more about fetishizing that mid-90s New York aesthetic (and hating on the south) combined with generic "he was better when he was underground" anti-pop sentiments.
As for Blueprint, like I said in another thread I thought shit was straight up classic when it first dropped because the sound was so refreshing in an atmosphere of spaced out Swizz, southern gutter Beats by the Pound, and southern gutter spaced out Mannie Fresh. Its dated badly just because of how massively the style was imitated, to the point now where only dudes who refine it (Cool&Dre, Rich Harrison) seem able to pull off the occasional 'well this was all worth it' moment.
PS: I like nerding out and writing big paragraphs back and forth so even if its humorless I dont mean to come off on some sort of 'i'm right you're wrong' shit, opinions are like assholes etc. I think its interesting just cuz of how big dude's profile is these days (and because unlike most artists, everyone involved in the discussion has usually heard Jay's whole catalogue)
Oh I don't just like Vol. 3 because I think its 'iconoclastic' of a choice or some shit, I just think its a better example of what music made Jay-Z Jay-Z. Reasonable Doubt sounds too trapped in its time, too much a product of the era rather than the artist compared to shit that would follow; while Illmatic defines its era, RD just seems like an afterthought, a prelude to a bunch of new styles. Plenty of the beats on it are nice and low key, but their charm is in their low-key nature; I kind of love this album if I think about it on its own terms, a low-key pre-classic, an exciting look at a dude just beginning to form the style that would define him. Like how Hua Hsu says Nas dropped 'fully formed,' Jay was taking years, a decade to develop his style.
If I think of it as a CLASSIC or Jay-Z's defining album or something it seems unable to do anything but fall short. I don't think a single song on this album would hit my top ten Jay-Z tracks.[/b] No matter how consistent it is. "So Ghetto"'s beat is better than "D'Evils" as far as Premier goes.
Its a very good debut, but to me a good comparison point is T.I.'s "I'm Serious" rather than Illmatic or Ready to Die. I don't think RD's 'classic status' needs to be defended at all, but if people are gonna step up on some 'i'm right, you're wrong' shit I think they should bring something to the table. In the 'real world' I know more people who'll ride for mid-period Jay (and even more who will ride for later Jay) but all rap 'heads' go on about how RD is his best album and honestly I think its more about fetishizing that mid-90s New York aesthetic (and hating on the south) combined with generic "he was better when he was underground" anti-pop sentiments.
As for Blueprint, like I said in another thread I thought shit was straight up classic when it first dropped because the sound was so refreshing in an atmosphere of spaced out Swizz, southern gutter Beats by the Pound, and southern gutter spaced out Mannie Fresh. Its dated badly just because of how massively the style was imitated, to the point now where only dudes who refine it (Cool&Dre, Rich Harrison) seem able to pull off the occasional 'well this was all worth it' moment.
I don't mean to derail this already pointless (but interesting) discussion, but I agree with nearly everything in this post except for the ludicrous assessment that Cool & Dre have "refined" the rediscovered soul sampling shit. They've got one memorable beat ("Hate It or Love It") and rehashed attempt to re-do that beat (Milian's "Say I"). Eff them.
Weezy's "I Aint Got Time" is pretty great too though, huh?
I don't think a single song on this album would hit my top ten Jay-Z tracks.[/b]
May I opine that maybe this is because Jay-Z is one of those artists whose material has actually IMPROVED with time?
Personally, I'd put "D'Evils" on my Top 10 Jay-Z list but seriously, finding 10 better songs from other albums is not the same thing as saying RD doesn't have good/memorable songs. After all, Jay-Z released 9 full length albums (I'm counting BP2 as two albums). That's a lot of songs to pick from.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
This isn't about being contrary, it's about being incorrect. You, sir, are the latter.
At what point did music criticism become an empirical science?
It's not; yet, one still has the ability to get it wrong.
"getting it wrong" >>>> boring opinions
Can anyone plz defend Reasonable Doubt in even a halfassed way. If we're gonna disagree, lets get some content involved. This "I'm right you're wrong" shit is childish.
It was pretty apparent that the Becky's of the day were into it...which is the prime requirement for many to declare a rap album a classic.
Hahaha! A "becky" album it most definitely was not.
Here's my "non-NY/non-elitist fuck" defence of "Reasonable Doubt"; the best NY indie* rap album of the last decade. If there's been a better one since, I must have missed it. Plaese to insert lengthy list of contenders below.
* = based on its original Priority-distributed release.
3. I know I'm not the only one that thought Tune and Toon were pronounced exactly the same way and is now wondering how you could possibly pronounce them differently.
Dizzy's the only one in this thread with half a brain and who has realised that this issue is really what it's all about. For the record, it is pronunced "choon"...
I don't think a single song on this album would hit my top ten Jay-Z tracks.[/b]
May I opine that maybe this is because Jay-Z is one of those artists whose material has actually IMPROVED with time?
Personally, I'd put "D'Evils" on my Top 10 Jay-Z list but seriously, finding 10 better songs from other albums is not the same thing as saying RD doesn't have good/memorable songs. After all, Jay-Z released 9 full length albums (I'm counting BP2 as two albums). That's a lot of songs to pick from.
putting one or two records off the album in your top ten is not what makes the album a classic.
Vol 2 and 3 were very inconsistent as albums
What makes Reasonable Doubt a classic to me is how representative it is of its time... it was complete insanity out here when that record dropped. At Noz' request I'll post the following anecdote:
i was going to DJ a party in the community center of a projects uptown, where my (at the time) g/f lived, who had swung me the gig. I was playing "Fortified Live" and shit! Dudes basically rushed the booth and were like, "YOU MUST PLAY JAY Z NOW." They/I played Reasonable Doubt, start to finish, four or five times over. It was that large. I've never seen anything like that since for a rap album. Not even "Blueprint".
The record was so thorough that it kept Jay-Z's credibility intact even as Vol. 1 made its best attempts to torpedo it.
Vol.2 was good but not great, and Vol. 3 was VERY spotty.
Oliver "Ain't No Nigga" was a HUGE record, it demolished the club when it first dropped. I don't think you were appreciative of those kinds of records back then.
You can't pick apart a classic and compare each piece individually with other records. The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. And with Reasonable Doubt, as with Ready To Die, Only Built For Cuban Links, Illmatic, and other classics of the era, if you didn't get it then, you won't get it now. You can look back on any of those albums and appreciate them for being skilled, well-sequenced, well-produced, whatever, but you can't recreate the vibe of hearing it out of every passing car, being in a club when it erupts to it, seeing dudes mouth the lyrics word for word on their walkmans, etc.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Oliver "Ain't No Nigga" was a HUGE record, it demolished the club when it first dropped. I don't think you were appreciative of those kinds of records back then.
That joint was on every mixtape I bought for about three/four months. I think it was even on some of the West Coast ones.
Oliver "Ain't No Nigga" was a HUGE record, it demolished the club when it first dropped. I don't think you were appreciative of those kinds of records back then.
That joint was on every mixtape I bought for about three/four months. I think it was even on some of the West Coast ones.
Did ya'll misread my shit? I never said it wasn't a mega-fucking-large-inescapable single. I said I was tired of it by the time "Reasonable Doubt" came out. Mostly because it was a mega-fucking-large-inescapable single. Getting tired of hearing something does not = not thinking it was important/popular. If anything, it's a result of it.
Oliver "Ain't No Nigga" was a HUGE record, it demolished the club when it first dropped. I don't think you were appreciative of those kinds of records back then.
That joint was on every mixtape I bought for about three/four months. I think it was even on some of the West Coast ones.
Did ya'll misread my shit? I never said it wasn't a mega-fucking-large-inescapable single. I said I was tired of it by the time "Reasonable Doubt" came out. Mostly because it was a mega-fucking-large-inescapable single. Getting tired of hearing something does not = not thinking it was important/popular. If anything, it's a result of it.
It sounded more like you were dismissing it as commercial fare. Don't try to hide those Jansport straps!
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
What makes Reasonable Doubt a classic to me is how representative it is of its time... it was complete insanity out here when that record dropped. At Noz' request I'll post the following anecdote:
i was going to DJ a party in the community center of a projects uptown, where my (at the time) g/f lived, who had swung me the gig. I was playing "Fortified Live" and shit! Dudes basically rushed the booth and were like, "YOU MUST PLAY JAY Z NOW." They/I played Reasonable Doubt, start to finish, four or five times over. It was that large. I've never seen anything like that since for a rap album. Not even "Blueprint".
The record was so thorough that it kept Jay-Z's credibility intact even as Vol. 1 made its best attempts to torpedo it.
Vol.2 was good but not great, and Vol. 3 was VERY spotty.
Oliver "Ain't No Nigga" was a HUGE record, it demolished the club when it first dropped. I don't think you were appreciative of those kinds of records back then.
You can't pick apart a classic and compare each piece individually with other records. The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. And with Reasonable Doubt, as with Ready To Die, Only Built For Cuban Links, Illmatic, and other classics of the era, if you didn't get it then, you won't get it now. You can look back on any of those albums and appreciate them for being skilled, well-sequenced, well-produced, whatever, but you can't recreate the vibe of hearing it out of every passing car, being in a club when it erupts to it, seeing dudes mouth the lyrics word for word on their walkmans, etc.
First thing I'm gonna say is that I like hearing about people's real life experiences surrounding albums. That's where the admiration comes in, when an album rules your everyday life to the point that you neither can, nor want to escape it.
With Reasonable Doubt, that definitely wasn't my experience, neither for myself nor the people around me. But I can appreciate the takes of others and that's why I am left with the "it's not for me" conclusion, rather than the "no way, there wasn't anybody into like that" treatment that some of y'all insist upon when we're talking about other albums.
So Reasonable Doubt is a classic.............that I personally wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
Now as far as people wanting others outside of that marginalized explosiveness to bow down to RD at every turn, I have this to say:
Classic, fine. But on the same level as The Chronic-Enter the Wu Tang-Illmatic-Ready to Die-All Eyez On Me?
Hell no, and please stop trying to portray it as such.
What makes Reasonable Doubt a classic to me is how representative it is of its time... it was complete insanity out here when that record dropped. At Noz' request I'll post the following anecdote:
i was going to DJ a party in the community center of a projects uptown, where my (at the time) g/f lived, who had swung me the gig. I was playing "Fortified Live" and shit! Dudes basically rushed the booth and were like, "YOU MUST PLAY JAY Z NOW." They/I played Reasonable Doubt, start to finish, four or five times over. It was that large. I've never seen anything like that since for a rap album. Not even "Blueprint".
The record was so thorough that it kept Jay-Z's credibility intact even as Vol. 1 made its best attempts to torpedo it.
Vol.2 was good but not great, and Vol. 3 was VERY spotty.
Oliver "Ain't No Nigga" was a HUGE record, it demolished the club when it first dropped. I don't think you were appreciative of those kinds of records back then.
You can't pick apart a classic and compare each piece individually with other records. The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. And with Reasonable Doubt, as with Ready To Die, Only Built For Cuban Links, Illmatic, and other classics of the era, if you didn't get it then, you won't get it now. You can look back on any of those albums and appreciate them for being skilled, well-sequenced, well-produced, whatever, but you can't recreate the vibe of hearing it out of every passing car, being in a club when it erupts to it, seeing dudes mouth the lyrics word for word on their walkmans, etc.
First thing I'm gonna say is that I like hearing about people's real life experiences surrounding albums. That's where the admiration comes in, when an album rules your everyday life to the point that you neither can, nor want to escape it.
With Reasonable Doubt, that definitely wasn't my experience, neither for myself nor the people around me. But I can appreciate the takes of others and that's why I am left with the "it's not for me" conclusion, rather than the "no way, there wasn't anybody into like that" treatment that some of y'all insist upon when we're talking about other albums.
So Reasonable Doubt is a classic.............that I personally wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
Now as far as people wanting others outside of that marginalized explosiveness to bow down to RD at every turn, I have this to say:
Classic, fine. But on the same level as The Chronic-Enter the Wu Tang-Illmatic-Ready to Die-All Eyez On Me?
Hell no, and please stop trying to portray it as such.
The thing that makes those albums so important is how much they changed what other people were rapping like. While you may not like it, Reasonable Doubt had the same effect - I would absolutely include it in that list.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
The thing that makes those albums so important is how much they changed what other people were rapping like. While you may not like it, Project Blowed[/b] had the same effect - I would absolutely include it in that list.
Oliver "Ain't No Nigga" was a HUGE record, it demolished the club when it first dropped. I don't think you were appreciative of those kinds of records back then.
That joint was on every mixtape I bought for about three/four months. I think it was even on some of the West Coast ones.
Did ya'll misread my shit? I never said it wasn't a mega-fucking-large-inescapable single. I said I was tired of it by the time "Reasonable Doubt" came out. Mostly because it was a mega-fucking-large-inescapable single. Getting tired of hearing something does not = not thinking it was important/popular. If anything, it's a result of it.
It sounded more like you were dismissing it as commercial fare. Don't try to hide those Jansport straps!
I didn't think it was that commercialed out - at that point, I had no idea who the hell Foxy Brown was (to therefore be wary of her) and I thought the hook was cute (however KALX unfriendly). But I was tired of hearing "7 Minutes of Funk." Keep in mind: Dru Down's "Pimp of the Year" was still getting play in the Bay (to say nothing about EPMD's lingering influence) and I just had little desire to sit with another single flipping the same bassline (this being, of course, a time when I actually cared if another single flipped the same bassline). Now I find that quaint.
And with Reasonable Doubt, as with Ready To Die, Only Built For Cuban Links, Illmatic, and other classics of the era, if you didn't get it then, you won't get it now.
Really? I would be surprised if anyone who appreciates rap on anything more than a superficial level were to dismiss those other three albums. Reasonable Doubt on the other hand... I actually had a younger friend (who incidentally holds Ready To Die, Illmatic & OB4CL in very high esteem) message me saying how much he appreciated my xxl post because he always felt "guilty" that he couldn't really get into RD.
Not to get too deep into the what makes a classic a classic argument again, but what you're saying effectively removes the notion of timelessness, something i've always taken to be one of the basic measuring points. You don't have to have been there[/b] to "get" What's Goin' On or Thriller, for example. Being there would surely refine your appreciation, but great music is great music on it's own, regardless of context.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
The thing that makes those albums so important is how much they changed what other people were rapping like. While you may not like it, Reasonable Doubt had the same effect - I would absolutely include it in that list.
I think this is absolutely true in relation to RD. A lot of NY rap was still on that post-Illmatic/The Infamous, "it's a cold hard world" introspective fatalism when RD dropped, and that record was like the bridge between the grittier street shit and all the Fifth Avenue shit that was poppin' off on Bad Boy.
I don't think Jay's rapping really changed that much; if anything it was an album that combined a bunch of themes other artists had done 2-3 years earlier, with the mafioso thing etc.
I like stories about experiencing the record in the setting of a social dynamic too; with rap thats why I end up liking shit usually, its hard to seperate this stuff from the period. But yeah, I think that sort of grassroots buzz for RD must have been over my head, or something. I was definitely listening to rap then, but in '96 I remember Bone Thugs and Crucial Conflict and Do or Die and Tupac being huge - kids rapping lyrics and shouting the hooks in the hallways at school etc. - but certainly not Jay-Z; "Ain't No N****" was a pretty minor hit at the time in the midwest. Jay-Z got really big that way with "Hard Knock Life" and then that string of hits afterwards - "Can I Get A..." "Big Pimpin" etc etc etc. So yeah, for RD it was definitely about going backwards to get into it.
I think you guys are way overrated 'consistency,' and I don't really think Vol. 3 is that much less consistent than RD, and the highs are certainly higher for me.
Good posts though.
PS: Can you guess what Jay's highest charting single is without looking it up?
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
The thing that makes those albums so important is how much they changed what other people were rapping like. While you may not like it, Reasonable Doubt had the same effect - I would absolutely include it in that list.
I think this is absolutely true in relation to RD. A lot of NY rap was still on that post-Illmatic/The Infamous, "it's a cold hard world" introspective fatalism when RD dropped, and that record was like the bridge between the grittier street shit and all the Fifth Avenue shit that was poppin' off on Bad Boy.
And what has that marriage done for NYC rap since?
I also don't think it's that iconoclastic to declare that "Vol 3" is Jay's best album - I think a lot of people said that after "Vol 3" dropped and while some folks retuned their scale post-"Blueprint" I would assume a lot of folks still ride for "Vol 3" as his best effort.
Oliver, pretty much the only person that I have ever heard say this is Noz. What people were saying at the time that Volume 3 dropped was that it was a return to form--that after failing with Vol. 1 and succeeding brilliantly with Vol. 2 to create a massive pop album, he was going back to the grittier material. People were hype because in some ways it represented a thematic return to RD, not because they actually thought it surpassed that record. I don't entirely agree with this analysis, but it's defintiely what I was hearing at the time. Personally, I think Vol. 3 contains some of Jay's best cuts, but it's way too spotty to be a contender for his best record--and the original version that included "Anything" and "Is that your Bitch" was much better than the one that was actually released.
...changed the proverbial game and is both a challenge and dialogue with that new paradigm.
And with Reasonable Doubt, as with Ready To Die, Only Built For Cuban Links, Illmatic, and other classics of the era, if you didn't get it then, you won't get it now.
Really? I would be surprised if anyone who appreciates rap on anything more than a superficial level were to dismiss those other three albums. Reasonable Doubt on the other hand... I actually had a younger friend (who incidentally holds Ready To Die, Illmatic & OB4CL in very high esteem) message me saying how much he appreciated my xxl post because he always felt "guilty" that he couldn't really get into RD.
Not to get too deep into the what makes a classic a classic argument again, but what you're saying effectively removes the notion of timelessness, something i've always taken to be one of the basic measuring points. You don't have to have been there[/b] to "get" What's Goin' On or Thriller, for example. Being there would surely refine your appreciation, but great music is great music on it's own, regardless of context.
I think What's Going On especially brings to mind a time, and if you didn't live it, you can gain a better understanding by listening to that record. I do not agree that there is this huge group of people who now don't get R.D., if anything, people like it more unanimously than when it dropped.
I am sure you can find someone that will dis any of those albums though - I particularly remember some of the older heads shitting on Illmatic something vicious. I have never met anyone who shat on OB4CL but I have heard plenty of people dis "Ready To Die".
I think you guys are way overrated 'consistency,' and I don't really think Vol. 3 is that much less consistent than RD, and the highs are certainly higher for me.
Deej, we are talking about albums. Without consistency--without, pardon me, a "thematic arc"--they're just clumps of songs.
And what is this attempt to marginalize RD as some sort of "well, I guess it may have seemed classic if you lived in NY at the time" schitt? We are not talking about some Project Blowed schitt that only seems classic if your name is Archaic. RD is a straight up rap classic--no qualification necessary. I lived in ATL at the time and never had a problem recognizing it.
I think you guys are way overrated 'consistency,' and I don't really think Vol. 3 is that much less consistent than RD, and the highs are certainly higher for me.
Deej, we are talking about albums. Without consistency--without, pardon me, a "thematic arc"--they're just clumps of songs.
Who cares? If I'm more likely to pull out an inconsistent album and hit the 'skip' button a couple times i'd rather do that if its got 10-15 tracks I'm really interested in hearing. I don't see whats so holy about 'consistency,' what a boring thing to be interested in. Thats like the difference between dancing to music and giving music a firm handshake.
Plenty of my favorite CDs are singles collections, with no real 'thematic' link whatsoever. Which is fine, lots of great albums are just clumps of songs.
Comments
BOSSY!
and it's not a soul patch anymore. it's grown into a chin strap beard with a pipe-cleaner like moustache.
MFer - that shit was written in 1995. "Ill piano drops" was acceptible slanguage at the time. As was the phrase, "slanguage."
I don't think RD needs to be explained/defended either but fuck it, I'm bored:
I actually liked Noz's post even if I disagreed with some of his points. I do, however, wonder if there's a little strawman-ism being put up here. To me, the majority of people don't automatically assume that RD = "classic." I think "Blueprint" tends to get that label quicker, especially for younger listeners who only discovered RD retroactively and don't find it quite as refined as Jay's later albums.
I also don't think it's that iconoclastic to declare that "Vol 3" is Jay's best album - I think a lot of people said that after "Vol 3" dropped and while some folks retuned their scale post-"Blueprint" I would assume a lot of folks still ride for "Vol 3" as his best effort.
Back to RD: I think what makes this album special is that it's really one of the first post-94 albums that understands how previous efforts like "Ready to Die," "Illmatic," "The Infamous" and "Enter the Wu-Tang" changed the proverbial game and is both a challenge and dialogue with that new paradigm. It's a player/gangsta album that adroitly balances a few key styles - the radio hit for ladies, the club hit, the street anthems - yet, to me at least, never feels overly calculated or contrived. I know that latter point is quite open to debate but seriously, compare RD with "It Was Written." As Ego Trip pointed out back in the day and as Noz alludes to in his post, ITW simply tries too hard whereas one could suggest that RD is similarly strategic as a commercial effort but Jay is more convincing, seems more effortless in creating his persona.
On a far simpler level, dude just dropped a lot of great songs on that album. I don't love all of them, but to me, this was a relatively filler-free effort. Personally, I never cared that much for "22s" and by the time this album dropped, I was already tired of both "Dead Presidents II" and "Ain't No Ni99a" (though I appreciate that both were vital to helping get the album made) but shit, "Politics as Usual"? "Brooklyn's Finest?" "Feelin It"? "D'Evils"? "Can I Live"? Et. al.
And I dare...DARE anybody to knock the production on here. Clark Kent + Primo + Ski = unfadeable.
If I think of it as a CLASSIC or Jay-Z's defining album or something it seems unable to do anything but fall short. I don't think a single song on this album would hit my top ten Jay-Z tracks.[/b] No matter how consistent it is. "So Ghetto"'s beat is better than "D'Evils" as far as Premier goes.
Its a very good debut, but to me a good comparison point is T.I.'s "I'm Serious" rather than Illmatic or Ready to Die. I don't think RD's 'classic status' needs to be defended at all, but if people are gonna step up on some 'i'm right, you're wrong' shit I think they should bring something to the table. In the 'real world' I know more people who'll ride for mid-period Jay (and even more who will ride for later Jay) but all rap 'heads' go on about how RD is his best album and honestly I think its more about fetishizing that mid-90s New York aesthetic (and hating on the south) combined with generic "he was better when he was underground" anti-pop sentiments.
As for Blueprint, like I said in another thread I thought shit was straight up classic when it first dropped because the sound was so refreshing in an atmosphere of spaced out Swizz, southern gutter Beats by the Pound, and southern gutter spaced out Mannie Fresh. Its dated badly just because of how massively the style was imitated, to the point now where only dudes who refine it (Cool&Dre, Rich Harrison) seem able to pull off the occasional 'well this was all worth it' moment.
I don't mean to derail this already pointless (but interesting) discussion, but I agree with nearly everything in this post except for the ludicrous assessment that Cool & Dre have "refined" the rediscovered soul sampling shit. They've got one memorable beat ("Hate It or Love It") and rehashed attempt to re-do that beat (Milian's "Say I"). Eff them.
Weezy's "I Aint Got Time" is pretty great too though, huh?
-e
May I opine that maybe this is because Jay-Z is one of those artists whose material has actually IMPROVED with time?
Personally, I'd put "D'Evils" on my Top 10 Jay-Z list but seriously, finding 10 better songs from other albums is not the same thing as saying RD doesn't have good/memorable songs. After all, Jay-Z released 9 full length albums (I'm counting BP2 as two albums). That's a lot of songs to pick from.
Hahaha! A "becky" album it most definitely was not.
Here's my "non-NY/non-elitist fuck" defence of "Reasonable Doubt"; the best NY indie* rap album of the last decade. If there's been a better one since, I must have missed it. Plaese to insert lengthy list of contenders below.
* = based on its original Priority-distributed release.
Dizzy's the only one in this thread with half a brain and who has realised that this issue is really what it's all about. For the record, it is pronunced "choon"...
putting one or two records off the album in your top ten is not what makes the album a classic.
Vol 2 and 3 were very inconsistent as albums
What makes Reasonable Doubt a classic to me is how representative it is of its time... it was complete insanity out here when that record dropped. At Noz' request I'll post the following anecdote:
i was going to DJ a party in the community center of a projects uptown, where my (at the time) g/f lived, who had swung me the gig. I was playing "Fortified Live" and shit! Dudes basically rushed the booth and were like, "YOU MUST PLAY JAY Z NOW." They/I played Reasonable Doubt, start to finish, four or five times over. It was that large. I've never seen anything like that since for a rap album. Not even "Blueprint".
The record was so thorough that it kept Jay-Z's credibility intact even as Vol. 1 made its best attempts to torpedo it.
Vol.2 was good but not great, and Vol. 3 was VERY spotty.
Oliver "Ain't No Nigga" was a HUGE record, it demolished the club when it first dropped. I don't think you were appreciative of those kinds of records back then.
You can't pick apart a classic and compare each piece individually with other records. The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. And with Reasonable Doubt, as with Ready To Die, Only Built For Cuban Links, Illmatic, and other classics of the era, if you didn't get it then, you won't get it now. You can look back on any of those albums and appreciate them for being skilled, well-sequenced, well-produced, whatever, but you can't recreate the vibe of hearing it out of every passing car, being in a club when it erupts to it, seeing dudes mouth the lyrics word for word on their walkmans, etc.
That joint was on every mixtape I bought for about three/four months. I think it was even on some of the West Coast ones.
Did ya'll misread my shit? I never said it wasn't a mega-fucking-large-inescapable single. I said I was tired of it by the time "Reasonable Doubt" came out. Mostly because it was a mega-fucking-large-inescapable single. Getting tired of hearing something does not = not thinking it was important/popular. If anything, it's a result of it.
It sounded more like you were dismissing it as commercial fare. Don't try to hide those Jansport straps!
First thing I'm gonna say is that I like hearing about people's real life experiences surrounding albums. That's where the admiration comes in, when an album rules your everyday life to the point that you neither can, nor want to escape it.
With Reasonable Doubt, that definitely wasn't my experience, neither for myself nor the people around me. But I can appreciate the takes of others and that's why I am left with the "it's not for me" conclusion, rather than the "no way, there wasn't anybody into like that" treatment that some of y'all insist upon when we're talking about other albums.
So Reasonable Doubt is a classic.............that I personally wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
Now as far as people wanting others outside of that marginalized explosiveness to bow down to RD at every turn, I have this to say:
Classic, fine. But on the same level as The Chronic-Enter the Wu Tang-Illmatic-Ready to Die-All Eyez On Me?
Hell no, and please stop trying to portray it as such.
The thing that makes those albums so important is how much they changed what other people were rapping like. While you may not like it, Reasonable Doubt had the same effect - I would absolutely include it in that list.
I didn't think it was that commercialed out - at that point, I had no idea who the hell Foxy Brown was (to therefore be wary of her) and I thought the hook was cute (however KALX unfriendly). But I was tired of hearing "7 Minutes of Funk." Keep in mind: Dru Down's "Pimp of the Year" was still getting play in the Bay (to say nothing about EPMD's lingering influence) and I just had little desire to sit with another single flipping the same bassline (this being, of course, a time when I actually cared if another single flipped the same bassline). Now I find that quaint.
Really? I would be surprised if anyone who appreciates rap on anything more than a superficial level were to dismiss those other three albums. Reasonable Doubt on the other hand... I actually had a younger friend (who incidentally holds Ready To Die, Illmatic & OB4CL in very high esteem) message me saying how much he appreciated my xxl post because he always felt "guilty" that he couldn't really get into RD.
Not to get too deep into the what makes a classic a classic argument again, but what you're saying effectively removes the notion of timelessness, something i've always taken to be one of the basic measuring points. You don't have to have been there[/b] to "get" What's Goin' On or Thriller, for example. Being there would surely refine your appreciation, but great music is great music on it's own, regardless of context.
I think this is absolutely true in relation to RD. A lot of NY rap was still on that post-Illmatic/The Infamous, "it's a cold hard world" introspective fatalism when RD dropped, and that record was like the bridge between the grittier street shit and all the Fifth Avenue shit that was poppin' off on Bad Boy.
I like stories about experiencing the record in the setting of a social dynamic too; with rap thats why I end up liking shit usually, its hard to seperate this stuff from the period. But yeah, I think that sort of grassroots buzz for RD must have been over my head, or something. I was definitely listening to rap then, but in '96 I remember Bone Thugs and Crucial Conflict and Do or Die and Tupac being huge - kids rapping lyrics and shouting the hooks in the hallways at school etc. - but certainly not Jay-Z; "Ain't No N****" was a pretty minor hit at the time in the midwest. Jay-Z got really big that way with "Hard Knock Life" and then that string of hits afterwards - "Can I Get A..." "Big Pimpin" etc etc etc. So yeah, for RD it was definitely about going backwards to get into it.
I think you guys are way overrated 'consistency,' and I don't really think Vol. 3 is that much less consistent than RD, and the highs are certainly higher for me.
Good posts though.
PS: Can you guess what Jay's highest charting single is without looking it up?
And what has that marriage done for NYC rap since?
Oliver, pretty much the only person that I have ever heard say this is Noz. What people were saying at the time that Volume 3 dropped was that it was a return to form--that after failing with Vol. 1 and succeeding brilliantly with Vol. 2 to create a massive pop album, he was going back to the grittier material. People were hype because in some ways it represented a thematic return to RD, not because they actually thought it surpassed that record. I don't entirely agree with this analysis, but it's defintiely what I was hearing at the time. Personally, I think Vol. 3 contains some of Jay's best cuts, but it's way too spotty to be a contender for his best record--and the original version that included "Anything" and "Is that your Bitch" was much better than the one that was actually released.
I think What's Going On especially brings to mind a time, and if you didn't live it, you can gain a better understanding by listening to that record. I do not agree that there is this huge group of people who now don't get R.D., if anything, people like it more unanimously than when it dropped.
I am sure you can find someone that will dis any of those albums though - I particularly remember some of the older heads shitting on Illmatic something vicious. I have never met anyone who shat on OB4CL but I have heard plenty of people dis "Ready To Die".
Deej, we are talking about albums. Without consistency--without, pardon me, a "thematic arc"--they're just clumps of songs.
Dude, no album with these songs:
Things That U Do (ft. Mariah Carey)
S. Carter (ft. Amil)
Pop 4 Roc (ft. Beanie Siegel/Memphis Bleek/Amil)
There's Been A Murder
is any kind of classic anything...
also "Watch Me" is way less than the sum of its parts, and I can't give props to any song called "NYMP".
Timbaland's tracks on that record were out of control though.
Who cares? If I'm more likely to pull out an inconsistent album and hit the 'skip' button a couple times i'd rather do that if its got 10-15 tracks I'm really interested in hearing. I don't see whats so holy about 'consistency,' what a boring thing to be interested in. Thats like the difference between dancing to music and giving music a firm handshake.
Plenty of my favorite CDs are singles collections, with no real 'thematic' link whatsoever. Which is fine, lots of great albums are just clumps of songs.