https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QugLZCp74GE

So tired of "out the mud"
Though I do like the "my own goal is to make a real nigga feel seen" line

to maintain his so called GOAT status…I will never understand the appeal of hearing him say the same shit over & over again

>to maintain his so called GOAT status…I will never
>understand the appeal of hearing him say the same shit over &
>over again

>RE: Same ol Jay self preservation rhymes/punchlines
>to maintain his so called GOAT status…I will never
>understand the appeal of hearing him say the same shit over &
>over again

I feel like I'm missing out on a global in-joke. Why does anyone take him remotely serious?

Wayne sounds like autotune, same ol' Jay

me, so HARD pass on this

just some pure, unadulterated hate so far 8 for 8 im dyin


(and i agree for the most part - wayne seems to have lost it, ross was aiight, legend sound like he was joking lol. jays verse was hard to me tho)

i have to assume this post is not going how the OP expected so far.

pretty sure its in jest

day, then I check this post and…..

Y’all crazy. Hov ate on this…

I have aged out of most of this shit.

I’m bumping JID.. lol

I don't speak to provoke. I speak because I think our time is short and each moment that we are not our truest selves, and we say what we do not mean because we imagine that is what somebody wants us to say, is wasting our time on this Earth - C. Adichie

And these mofos are so inside the joke that they’re the punchline

That's the most interesting thing to me about the song
I'm here for middle aged rap... but this didn't really live up to the hype
Decent. Not mad... but my expectations dropped off of the chorus... that absolutely could've been/should've been better considering the lineup
Also not a fan of Wayne auto-tuned
$.02

As a somewhat younger OKP who’s obsessed over the worst, best and worst followed by a balance of mystically bad and confoundingly great performances, knowing the lifestyle and more importantly effects of that lifestyle I can’t believe it, as an underrated Wayne/Pain collab once moaned


~~~~~~~~~
"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

... the guy who wears a lot of designer shit and throws them together but can't really dress. I wish I could find who said that and where, but I couldn't agree more. The Hov verse is fine, but I could not listen to it ever again

Jay tries to have dope verses, Nas just is.

There’s a difference.

If you don’t know, chances are you’re wack as fuck too.

But we already new the OG poster was wack as fuck.

His entire life has been spent typing “Nas lost” on the internet.

Because I don’t consider all the other bits outside of Ether/Takeover to matter, and I’m a playground insults don’t carry vs. real haymakers guy. Which is to say, NAS LOST. But I’m glad he did because a hungry Nas has been and probably always would be more interesting than a hungry Jay.

Anybody who thinks Nas vs Jay post 2010 is an argument - more pointedly, an argument with Jay ahead on the scorecard - is too attached to their agenda. Nas has been so consistent and fun to listen to, while Jay has this drunken master approach that is always entertaining but also often sounds like the worst possible version of rappers getting real money and happiness.

It got too exponential for him, though 4:44 is IMO emphatically dope (and better than Lemonade 🤕😳😶😬🤷‍♂️)

It’s still not fun to listen to the way Magic let alone Life Is Good was/is

~~~~~~~~~
"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

>His entire life has been spent typing “Nas lost” on the
>internet.

in most cases, it has absolutely nothing to with the actual posts.

Nas lost TO THIS DAY but.....

Nas' artistry today far surpasses modern Jay-Z. He's been better than Jay since Jay came back to rap. If Jay is Jordan Nas is Zeke. That's a fair comparison objectively. Nas is the businessman Jay proclaims to be without any of the heinous allegations or alleged affiliation with an informant.

Verse was fire of course.

It sounds like a parody of a save the children song.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

I like the beats more than I like the R&B singer put through a filter labeled "Choking chicken voice." I mean did they need John Legend or could they have just had a computer generate the voice before running through the filter??

And Lil Wayne too.

At least Jay-Z didn't get put through that filter.

This is *music* now, we need to get over it.

Dont know if Im on an exercise euphoric high but this cd is good. I dont even listen to this type of shit either but it goes. All of the artists/songs. I cant stand Khalid but shit..this shit good (Jay).

-Alchemist shrug-

-->

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEadoEGgcHk

do u fools listen to music or do u just skim thru it?

he biased. verse still mid.

make no fool.

If you ain't got nothing nice to say nothing at all.

...

lotta the same themes too (corner shit, observation, wonderment at the journey/current position). nothin he aint been doing but it kinda underlines the point ha.

thats a good call i definitely hear it.

“We not gone stop. Hip-hop is young. We still growing. We not falling for that tricknology the public puts out there now.
Before it was the American Dream. ‘Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You can make it in America’ – all these lies that America told us our whole life. And then when we start getting it, they try to lock us out of it. They start inventing words like ‘capitalist’ and things like that. “We’ve been called niggass and monkeys and shit. I don’t care what words y’all come up with. Y’all gotta come with stronger words. We're not gonna stop. We're not gonna be tricked out of our position. Ya'll locked us out, ya'll created a system that doesn't include us. Fine. We went our alternative route, we made this music, we did our thing. You know, we hustled, we fucking killed ourselves to get to this space and now it’s like, ‘eat the rich.’ Man, we’re not stopping.”

For a nigga that compares himself to Fred Hampton and other black revolutionaries, he obviously has never read what they said, never watched their speeches or interviews. Never even watched the fucking Daniel Kaluuya movie, but they would absolutely HATE Jay Z.

“He’s obviously never read…” lol

So blindly condescending

He’s generalizing a ton in that quote, but speech like that for this Instagram all day generation can be wildly inspiring. Try to see the good in it.

Critiqued capitalism at every turn. They were fiercely against Black capitalism and were using the term in the 60s. No one is making up shit to demean Jay Z. The very people he idolize would have said the same shit. And if he studied them instead of using them as accessories, he wouldn't have said that dumb shit.

And you sound dumb with that "he's evolved" drivel considering his "what's better than one billionaire" line came out in 2017. And he called himself Fred Hampton in a song that came out last year

"Get ready....for your blessing....."
"Bury me by my Grand-Grand and when you can come follow me"

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

I spit a Thoreau river from B to lil' sis' house
Shed a tear when my spirit don't let the God come out

*insert foley of crumpling papers hitting a trash can*

Guru, the Goldbelly delivery hit the lobby yet?


~~~~~~~~~
"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

I have almost zero opinion on his performance other than I love how much people seem compelled to talk about it but this seems like a lot. A rap guy that rapped about getting rich and became more popular than anybody raps about his thoughts on becoming (stupidly!) rich despite nagging memories that, and yea this kinda sucks, at best makes him endlessly fascinated by the business man turned rapper to clean his coke money trope.

I'm admittedly far from the "modern Jay is trash" train. I'll admit that every verse post, say, Kingdom Come definitely demands skepticism, but aside from 4:44 (which I thought was great, though I admit I already found the Lemonade album to be cynical so I also heard 4:44 as a baseline capitalist rebuttal far more than, y'know, married couple works their shit out through pop music) bucking everything I just said in the parenthetical to be one of the more interesting, honest albums in all of Old Guy Rap I think Jay usually kinda gets this and it's why he does guest verses so sparingly.

Though if that sounds generous, I do see that Jay often misunderstands caricature'd performances of his longest tenured fans' deepest cutting satire for what he views as insights from on high that break class barriers. I appreciate that his insane class ascension pretty much demands he see his raps that way, if he insists on doing it as sparingly and with such pomp as he does.

(And why not? I'd love to be as baseline decent as he is at a job he hasn't taken seriously for over a decade while making hand-over-fist-money in another field I never had any business being in. Shit is wild.)

But when I hear these verses, sometimes I can't help but get the feeling that deep down he's trying to make a point that's not only Deeper Than Rap © or bigger than himself, he's just trying to be big Unc outside the bodega...and to me it's so misdirected by his insistence on dropping these verses for status quo rappers over status quo beats.

If he really wanted to turn his catalog into a gallery he should be spotlighting Standing on the Corner, billy woods, JPEGMafia, Milo/R.A.P. Ferreira, hell just buy up and champion all the shit that never got its due while the Roc, Bad Boy and Ruff Ryders were shuffle-stepping all over cooler shit. The dude has proven again and again that he has great taste (despite actually signing many mid talents) but he's content to go where the ears already are rather than make them find him.

Whenever a guy like Jay tries to make a try-hard verse like this (that, again, I like, for better or worse) become the highlight of a DJ Khaled album, to me it just spotlights how many other artists who are ACTUALLY ARTISTS, would benefit from the sort of attention this kind of performance gets. Obviously the "God Did" prompt provoked something in Jay and props to Khaled for that (as long as you care about the verse, or the attention it's provoked), but he clearly still has enough fun rapping that I doubt he needs inspiration as lofty as Khaled's "keys open doors" weaponizing of aspirational, mega-church religiosity.

Sometimes when I hear something like this, or "Neck & Wrist" (which I felt was way more facetiously impressive until you locked the words in) I can't help but feel bad for the dude. I still enjoy hearing him rap but he should probably stop, because his history in the game itself clashes with his status in life in such a way that the only people that can relate to what he's trying to say are such abstract monsters.

I'm not in the "grown man Jay sucks" camp either, necessarily. But this WAS a dude who solidified his fame outside of the east coast with the line "Let 'em play with the dick in the truck" while letting Bun B anchor an insanely expensive music video with yachts and more models than any shiesty EP would ever pay in full. You'd like to think he'd do more with his money, status, and clearly undiminished passion for rapping to do more than float the status quo.

~~~~~~~~~
"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

I appreciate the dedication of your breakdown but for me.. its just rap.

and Jay raps better than most.

and I actually appreciate his content changing at this age. He made it, he bragged about it and now he gets to reflect on what he did right, what he did wrong, what he is still doing, etc

its like getting mad at Bron still putting up 50 in a playoff game.

Appreciate that shit.

and I aint even a big Jay fan.