Most likely you still feel that way now. As I've grown older and seen more discussion around this album I've come to realize just how uncommon that opinion is.

But you don't really hear it from people in my age group, a decade or so younger who came to Jay-Z first through MTV music videos, and then their first full album from him was likely The Blueprint or Black Album, and then you likely skipped his jiggy era completely to hear Reasonable Doubt because by that point 1996 in general had been so lionized you had to go all the way back and move forward from there.

For most people I know my age, it's practically a flip of the coin whether Blueprint or Reasonable Doubt is better with Black Album a not-so-dark horse third candidate. I think it'd be just about a perfect album without "Ain't No", though that song now sounds so dated its almost notalgically great, but I was likely partially conditioned to feel that way by the times in which it came into my life.

I think it's kind of great that Reasonable Doubt is lowkey one of the more divisive "classics" in the hip-hop canon, though.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz