![]() There are a handful of tracks on here that have the power to stagger and amaze and the main contender is the one we already know, the truly remarkable ‘DOA (Death Of Auto-tune)’, which clatters around like a bull in a china shop with haywire guitar and woodwind samples stamping all over the mess, a testament to the genius of lesser-known producer and veteran Common collaborator No ID. So don’t believe the hype, just feel the quality. You’re never going to fail with an all-star line-up like that, and once the risk of failure has been removed, what other risks are there for a musical risk-taker to take? And on the guest-slots side, you’ve got more Kanye, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, Luke Steele, Kid Cudi, Mr Hudson, Pharrell and soon-to-be-megastar Drake. On the production side, you’ve got oodles of Kanye West, three Timbaland offerings and one each from The Neptunes and Swizz Beatz. It does, occasionally, feel like it is being presented less as an album than as a blue-chip portfolio, simultaneously reminding us that, however good Jay-Z is as an MC, – and his flow is more intricate and experimental than ever – he’s even better as a businessman and an unnervingly efficient talent-spotter. The original blueprint, ‘The Blueprint’ was definitely not a failure, nor was its 2002 successor ‘The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse’, and their little baby 2009 brother is assuredly not a failure either, there’s too much straight-up good stuff on here for that. He hasn’t changed the face of hip-hop, but he has made, once again, a corking grab-bag of modern hip-hop.Ī few caveats: you can glean from the title alone that ‘The Blueprint 3’ is almost machine-tooled to be a hit he may claim that his new album is all about fearlessness and risk but why is he, for the second time, harking back to his own 2001 high watermark? When it actually comes down to it, isn’t that title nonsensical anyway? Can’t there only be one blueprint, one rubber-stamped version of one man’s definitive vision? If you’re onto ‘The Blueprint 3’ then, doesn’t that mean the first two were failures? I don’t do it for the money.” All of which are laudable sentiments for the modern artist. If people see me being fearless, taking chances, then maybe everyone will go for it. “As a person at the forefront of my genre,” he said in a recent interview, “it’s my responsibility to make my contribution to correct it. When it comes to talking a good game, Jigga has been practically talking six sixes off one over, 147 breaks and nine-dart finishes all at once. To hear Shawn Carter speak recently, you’d think that ‘The Blueprint 3’, his 11th studio album, was set to change the face of hip-hop music forever. ![]()
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