>I remember
>when Com was a "Street"
>rapper and then he did
>Retrospect for life, shit hit
>the fan. The patern is
>starting to repeat with Jay
>too,watch and see...
>

but I think this is the mentality that steve is referring to. why would you want to see 'common's pattern' repeat through jay-Z? you have already seen and experienced an artist growing the way common has and continues to do. you have already seen artists such as andre3000 grow too. jay-z has been growing at his own clip and becoming the artist and performer he wants to be. jay seems like an individualist to me respecting his own opinion and judgment and so its not like he is scared to touch on other subjects or experiment more musically or lyrically. instead of trying to envision what he is going to become why not deal with who he is...and be delighted if you like his music and simply accept it if you don't. otherwise you continue to be disappointed by your own expectations. of course we are always going to have high expectations for certain artists based on what we think they are capable of, but like all things there is a middle path to walk.
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"Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives-and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values-and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment, but self denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws-and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attact him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worth enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of spirit. And then he will wonder why lover brings him nothing but boredom, and sex-nothing but shame." -taken from 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand