The Blueprint 3 and Jay-Z's Musical Identity Crisis

Jay-Z has a complicated relationship with auto-tune. Ostensibly, he hates it. In fact, the first single released off of his new album, The Blueprint 3* is called D.O.A. (Death of Auto Tune). In this song, Jay-Z utilizes the pitch-correcting, mistake-erasing audio processor as a modern metaphor for age-old gripes that serious hip hop fans have about certain elements within their genre. These gripes include a perceived lack of authenticity on the part of some rappers; a move by these rappers away from a masculine gritty, hardcore sound and persona to more polished, universal ones; and a general perception that these rappers' goals are to cash in on disposable, mass-consumed hits rather than creating enduring art and social commentary.

We can never really know Jay-Z's intentions in writing this song, but since it was hand picked to be the first single from The Blueprint 3 and was released over two months before that album dropped, it's hard not to hear it as a tone-setter for the rest of the album. Here are the first two lines from the first verse of the song: "This is anti-auto-tune, death of the ringtone/This ain't for iTunes, this ain't for sing alongs." In the context of rap's authenticity wars, it's hard not to hear these lines as a mission statement: "I am not fake and am against those who are. My goal is to make art, not to cash in on single and ringtone sales. I am making music that is personal and can only be truly enjoyed by the initiated."

He further enumerates these goals throughout the song. "All y'all lack aggression/Put your skirt back down, grow a set man" is a call for a return to masculinity (the subtext being that softer radio-friendly rap is ruining the genre). When he says "This ain't for Z100 . . ./This is for Hot 97" he is using New York's top-40 station and authentic hip-hop station (respectively) to say that his music is for serious hip-hop fans only. This is rap music, not pop music.

Let's stop there for a second and look at some pictures that I took yesterday (Sept 8th). Here's what happens when you search for "Jay-Z death autotune" on iTunes:

Wait just a second here! I thought "this ain't for iTunes" and yet, there it is! You can buy two versions of the song, the accompanying video, and yes, even a ringtone. Why is there a censored version available? That must be for the small subset of real hardcore hip-hop heads who also happen to be offended by coarse language. Allow me one more iTunes screen capture, please:

Now this just can't be right. Is that a song from The Blueprint 3 at number one on iTunes's list of all ringtones? A Jay-Z song is the biggest ringtone in the country! And that song is from the same album as D.O.A.! But I thought this album was "death of the ringtone."!

The inconsistencies don't end there. Kanye West is one of hip-hop's biggest auto-tune proponents. He made an entire album last year filled with nothing but him singing songs in auto-tune. That was the whole album. All auto-tune. You would think Jay-Z would be against this and would want to separate himself from those rappers that employ his most hated of music processing tools. Yet, here Kanye is on The Blueprint 3, receiving producing credits for 7 of the fifteen songs on the album and actually guest rapping on two of those tracks! One of those tracks, "Hate" actually uses an auto-tune like effect on a voice repeatedly saying "haters" to form the beat of the song.

So Jay-Z has made an album whose first single is decrying the use of auto-tune. Then he turns half of the album over to hip-hop's second biggest auto-tune proponent. Then he actually uses an audio processing effect that might as well be auto-tune on one of the tracks on that album. Like I said, this relationship is pretty complicated!

But Jay-Z isn't just mixed up on his feelings towards auto-tune, he's unclear about pretty much all other aspects of his music, too. Like we talked about earlier, Jay says in D.O.A. that his music is not pop music. Four tracks later we find Swizz Beats forming the beat to On To The Next One out of one of the biggest pop songs of 2007 (Justice's D.A.N.C.E.) In What We Talkin Bout, he says "[I'm] talkin' bout music, I ain't talkin bout rap." Two tracks later, he spends all of D.O.A. talking about specific things in rap that he doesn't like. In What We Talking Bout, he further says "You can choose to sit in front of your computer/Posin with guns, shootin YouTube up/Or you could come with me to the White House . . .", which is a Cosby-esque line about African-American culture needing to grow up, stop fetishizing gangster culture, and look to Obama as an example of what can be achieved if you buy in. Then again on D.O.A. talks about how the song is "practically assault with a deadly weapon", tells the listener that "you should feel threatened", and closes out with the lines, "If you a gangsta, this is how you prove it to me/Yeah, just get violent."

So what are we to make of this album, then? This is pretty far from a cohesive artistic vision. If he didn't want to pander to serious hip-hop fans, then why include D.O.A.? If he didn't want ringtones and radio hits, then why have Rhianna sing the chorus on Run This Town? If he didn't want a club song (or at least something that could be remixed into one), then why include the obligatory Swizz Beats track? It's almost like he's trying to make a universal record; something that can be enjoyed by everyone on a variety of levels.

The final track of The Blueprint 3 is a song that not so much samples Alphaville's Forever Young as covers it. When I first heard this track in the context of the whole album, I couldn't help but be reminded of Pinocchio Story, the closing track from Kanye's 808s. Both are highly emotional, highly polarizing closing tracks that basically tell the whole story of their accompanying albums. While Pinocchio painted a portrait of a lonely, desperate artist isolated by fame, Young Forever depicts a contemplative yet content artist in the twilight of his career who is cocooned and enveloped by his fame. In a career filled with (defined by?) lyrics obsessing about his legacy, Jay finally crafts a song about the subject that is compelling not because of what he says about his legacy, but the inclusive way in which he contextualizes it. He frames the whole discussion in the universal context of mortality and the accompanying struggle against age and irrelevancy, and then lays that discussion over a timeless, emotionally evocative pop melody. He is taking one of the central motifs in his music and finally presenting it in a way that anyone can feel. That is what great pop musicians do.

Your opinion on this album will most likely be decided by either your expectations for it or what you think Jay-Z was trying to accomplish. If you wanted a record that you could listen to by yourself on headphones and endlessly dissect, then you're going to be disappointed. This record is best listened to through car speakers in a full backseat. If you thought that Jay-Z was trying to execute a return to late 90's/early aughts form, you're going to be disappointed. This album is better than but in much the same vein as Kingdom Come. If you wanted a rap album, then you're going to be disappointed. This is pop music.**

But what are we to make of Jay himself, then? How do we receive an artist who tells you that he doesn't make pop music and then proceeds to release a pop album? I reconcile these two things by again turning to the context of rap. Braggadocio is de riguer among rappers. The idiom requires rappers to build up towering walls of hip, masculine artifice around themselves to inflate themselves and their music with authenticity and purpose. Often, a rapper's true self is either revealed in spite of himself or never at all. On The Blueprint 3, Jay-Z is an example of the former. To me, listening to him try to reconcile himself with the type of musician he has become and the type of music he now makes in 2009 is almost as interesting as him trying to reconcile his relationship with his estranged father in 2003 or reconcile his drug dealing past with his millionaire mogul future in 1998. Serious rap fans won't accept that,*** but don't worry Jay, pop music fans like me are ready to welcome you with open arms.

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*Which was released a week early yesterday in response to the album leaking last Monday.
**Jay-Z fully became a pop musician with 2003's The Black Album, but he has been a huge unifying force in music since at least his seminal contribution to MTV's Unplugged series with The Roots in 2001. Think about Collision Course, The Grey Album (obviously indirectly in this case), the "I Declare War" concert, his R. Kelly collaborations, and even his recent comments about Grizzly Bear and the "Indie rock movement." Jay-Z spent most of the aughts uniting people and bringing disparate music styles together into something that everyone can enjoy on a variety of levels. That's what pop musicians do. That's what pop music is.
***And nothing says that they have to.



Special thanks to my buddy SciSmi for his insights on this album, which aided me a great deal in writing this post.