|
Alongside a biographical book, Decoded, intended to explain the stories behind the songs, Mr Sean Carter is releasing the first volume of his Hits Collection in the midst of the standard holiday compilation season. Longtime fans of the Brooklyn bred rapper and entrepreneur can comfortably overlook this release, as it contains no new material. And although the deluxe edition contains five deeper cuts, they're tracks that diehard fans will have likely sought out on their own by now.
But for those uninitiated few who may have recently fallen in love with the hooks on Empire State Of Mind or Run This Town, The Hits Collection Volume One is a decent introduction to the Jigga Man. Newcomers should note that Sean Carter goes by Jay-Z, Jigga, HOVA. Many names for many purposes. It's a way for artists to craft their personae, to cultivate myths and to create a legend.
Jay-Z grew up in the Marcy Projects of Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn. He, like many others, used his troubled childhood as a backdrop for his art and as a way out of the lifestyle he had been cultivating as a teenager. The first track on his greatest hits, Public Service Announcement (Interlude) from The Black Album, is his condensed rags-to-riches tale: drug dealing, rapping, celebrating wealth, criticizing other rappers. Jay makes it clear all along that what made him a good drug dealer also made him into a good rapper and businessman: "I'm ten years removed, still the vibe is in my veins / I got a hustler spirit, nigga, period." And: "No matter where you go, you are what you are, player / And you can try to change, but that's just the top layer."
As the mentee of Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z started his musical career during the height of '90s gangsta rap, which had grown from niche roots with '80s groups like N.W.A up through big hits from Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Biggie, and Tupac Shakur. In 1996, when Jay debuted with Reasonable Doubt, American hip-hop was dominated by gangsta rap and its West versus East Coast feud. This branch of hip-hop was slowly making its way into popular consciousness on radio stations and music television. It's a shame that this greatest hits collection doesn't include any tracks from Jay's first two releases, but that could be corrected on Volume Two.
Though the collection is loaded with hits from the second half of his rap career - three from The Blueprint III, four from The Black Album - the songs do give a clear impression of how Jay helped to push hip-hop out of the violent feuds of the '90s into a more mainstream palatable, sophisticated arena of sharp hooks paired with sharper words. Who else would be able to make a hip-hop hit - Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) - based off a sample from a Broadway musical (Annie)?
Jay has had an undeniable influence in hip-hop in the past two decades. With hits like Big Pimpin', he's helped push hip-hop into the music mainstream. With Rocawear, his clothing line, he's helped to commercialise hip-hop beyond the music. And as the founder of Roc-A-Fella Records, former CEO of Def Jam Records, creator of 11 number one albums, and mentor of Kanye West (among others), he has become the very foundation of the third generation of hip-hop, something to which most everything in the near future will be compared.
Comments
|
Jay-Z MP3s or CDs
Jay-Z on Spotify
INTERVIEW:
