My Two Cents on The Blueprint 3

If you own (or borrow regularly) a computer and/or have an internet connection, you may know that Jay-Z (you know, the owner of the Brooklyn Nets) has just (like, today) released the final edition of his Blueprint Trilogy appropriately titled, The Blueprint 3. I think for a lot of people this was a pretty highly anticipated release i.e. according to wikipedia people were guessing which songs were going to be on the album, who was producing it, etc. etc., ... you may have guessed that I was not one of those people (doing the anticipating).

But, just because I haven't been hitting refresh on The Blueprint 3 wikipedia entry since Jay-Z released his second post retirement album, Kingdom Come, doesn't mean that I wasn't excited about TBP3. I would definitely classify the original Blueprint as a 'classic' hip-hop album. I might also be the one person in the world that would say that Jay's Black Album was even better than the Blueprint; this may be due to the Black Album's ability to spawn some unbelievable remix albums (Kev Brown's Brown Album, 9th Wonder's Black is Back, Kno vs. Hov The White Albulum -- not a typo) and, of course Danger Mouse's Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up Grey Album.

Given the Jigga Man's place on the R.O.B.'s Mount Rushmore of Rappers and all the hype surrounding TBP3 I feel like he's managed to live up to the hype admirably. I'm not sure the album is stronger than either the original Blueprint or the Black Album, but there's certainly enough there to keep me (and others) happy. If I were going to be picky, I'd say there were a few too many guests (only 3 songs don't feature another artist), the album is too long and could really have done with probably three less songs ('Venus VS. Mars' 'Hate' and 'Reminder'), and could have been a little bit more sonically/thematically cohesive. But, hey, things could definitely be a lot worse; like, I'm going to pretend they never happened Kingdom Come and American Gangster (minus 'Roc Boys') worse. At the very least, if you like any hip-hop at all there are a slew of really great tracks ("Real As It Gets" "Run This Town" "Off That" "A Star is Born" and so on) and you're bound to like a couple of them...

Bottom line, like with any release of this magnitude - which creates expectations - people are going to be disappointed, its inevitable... anyone remember the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible? Yeah, same sort of deal. It didn't really matter how good it was, it wasn't going measure up to Funeral, and it definitely wasn't going to measure up to the next Arcade Fire album, and if you're going to take the time to bag on Neon Bible then there probably wasn't going to be much that would keep you happy in the first place, so, please view this as the place to not complain about TBP3...