The Gift and the Curse: Jay-Z’s The Black Album at 20

Looking back on the album that was supposed to be Sean Carter’s retirement plan

November 24, 2023November 24, 2023 Ted Miller 0 Comments 99 Problems, Change Clothes, Ice-T, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Rick Rubin, Roc-A-Fella, Sean Carter, The Black Album, Timbaland

Page from the liner notes of The Black Album (Image: X)

Few rappers have ever obsessed over control like Jay-Z, which is why even fewer ones have become a billionaire like Jay-Z.

To determine his own destiny and cement himself in the pantheon he always threatened to lord over — not to mention dropping “Takeover,” the deadliest diss track since “Roxanne’s Revenge” unless you count Eminem ethering his mom — the only person Sean Carter could let end his career was him.

Here’s how that career was going. Sean Carter’s 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt, which was savvy enough to share the stage with a then-living Biggie, is a classic to many. His previous The Blueprint²: The Gift and the Curse was a classic to nobody, resetting his need to prove something. In between we got In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (not bad), Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life (highly entertaining breakthrough smash), Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter (his absolute masterpiece, though curiously obscure now except among real heads), and one more classic, The Blueprint, which was the world’s real introduction to master producer (and current Nazi sympathizer) Kanye West even though he really debuted on The Dynasty, a strong, underrated, kinda-posse album that just slightly oversaturated the market by being released under the Jay-Z brand.

Every single one of these albums is good-to-great, though even Roc-A-Fella tried to offer a one-disc alternative called The Blueprint 2.1 to the weakest one. That’s the kind of control freak Jay-Z is: someone who wanted to have his cake with the ambition of a double album for a victory lap, but also eat it by not alienating his fans with an indulgent director’s cut without also offering a sleeker, tighter product.

His attempt to hang up his jersey with a third undisputed classic, The Black Album, is also good-to-great, though I’m more amenable these days to the latter even though a good third of it has never quite done it for me and the self-assurance in his own rapping was beginning to feel like comfort for him, and a schlep for us.

VIDEO: Jay-Z “99 Problems”

So let’s start with the great, because the greatest song of the 2000s deserves its own paragraph (and I’m willing to hear arguments for “Stan,” “B.O.B.” or “Ms. Jackson,” maybe even “Work It,” but we can all agree it’s something hip-hop). “99 Problems” began like most works of genius: as a heist. Ice-T’s “99 Problems” may have been released a decade earlier and already been stripped for parts by Hova on the ribald riot “Girls, Girls, Girls,” but he might as well swipe that title and perfect hook, too. And while he’s time-traveling, he might as well snap up Rick Rubin on the way, who gives him some bells to rock. Really — guitar chords so fat there’s only room for two. Drums that crunch like Jurassic Park. And the most fun, serious, realest, most recognizable rapping of Sean Carter’s life.

Marrying King of New York-style rhyming to old-school King of Rock boom, smartly mouthing off to a cop (a part I once saw Justin Timberlake play on their joint tour ten years ago), there will never be a cooler Jay-Z song. Cool without resting on his gangsta prerequisites like American Gangster or being an asshole like Vol. 3. And true to his word, none of the conflicts outlined in “99 Problems” are bitches. It’s just such a great, hilarious, uplifting, defiant song. The real “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” even if that neighboring tune is pretty great in itself, thanks in part to Timbaland’s sneaky beat.

The rest of Jay-Z’s eighth album indeed orbits around “99 Problems” but that’s no insult. At least two other songs come close to matching its riptide. Kanye’s Max Romeo-sampling “Lucifer” is far more menacing than the one called “Threat,” and the era-closing “My 1st Song” was the first time I ever heard rapping in 6/8 time. The latter and the bombastic “What More Can I Say” are better Just Blaze imitations than the producer’s actual Black Album contributions, the garish, myth-milking opener “December 4th” (guess whose birthday), and the much better, much-loved “Public Service Announcement.” The latter boasted about both Beyoncé wearing his chain and his own paradoxical existence as “Che Guevara with bling on,” excused as “I’m complex,” which has since been debunked to be mostly bling no matter how progressive his donations. The man’s an NFL partner. Nevertheless, it remains an explosive set opener.

The cherrypicked nature of The Black Album sort of invites this cut-by-cut auditing. I’ve never known what to make of first single “Change Clothes,” whose mood I can’t describe. It’s apparently about exchanging your jersey for tailored fare, an upward mobility metaphor that matched Timberlake’s own Jay feature “Suit & Tie” ten years later in its arid, department store emptiness. It still makes me feel nothing, with even Pharrell’s falsetto devoid of weirdness having already bent the landscape to its will many times over. At best, “Change Clothes” and “Allure,” the other Neptunes contribution. helpfully juggle a single-minded album’s moods for the lighter in between more intense fare. But it feels misbegotten for the album where Jay crowns himself and employs his dream team of producers to reduce not one but two tracks by the era’s MVPs to mere changes of pace. Not as misbegotten as “Justify My Thug” at least (in which neither DJ Quik’s West Coast squeedle nor interpolations of Madonna or, lol, Bill Haley mix), but a small shame.

Jay-Z The Black Album, Roc-A-Fella Records 2003

Ultimately, these seesaws have made The Black Album age better as a sum than its individual parts; “Change Clothes” is a breath of down-to-earth air after three straight openers about what a big deal Jay-Z is. At the same time, the loungeable “Encore” and its “what the hell are you waiting for” refrain have stayed in the head over time just as much as H-to-the-Izzo or get-that-dirt-off-your-shoulder. “Moment of Clarity” stacking the titles from his own discography in the hook helps its leaden Eminem beat onto its feet (and it’s a classic meta-troll to wish he was more like Talib Kweli than a money addict. Even as a billionaire he’s more graceful than Kweli, and you do not want to compare their talent). But small touches like the synth vwoops on the intro juxtaposed with stoic Wulitzer seal the deal that this is above all a producers’ album despite the star’s proclamations of his own supremacy.

And that’s really the legend he’s selling: Great rapper, maybe even the greatest, but watch him turn a million bucks into a billion. Watch him hoist himself up on the best foundation money can buy: Timbaland, Eminem, the Neptunes, Just Blaze, 2003 Kanye West. No guest rappers hogging the spotlight, of course. And no one bought the retirement gimmick either.

Retirement? His next move was president of Def Jam. He launched Rihanna and her dozens of chart missiles into the stratosphere at the same time as he signed The Roots and told them not to strain themselves trying anything commercial. This is a man who knows what he does best. Which is why he returned to rapping not three years after he threw himself a king’s farewell party.