The Jay-Z

«Lord forgive me I never would've made it without sin» from Jay-Z - Free Mason

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The road to fame

The Reasonable doubt was not noticed much by the mainstream audience, only professionals and true devotees of rap were astounded by it. He received this kind of approval when Vol. 2 Hard Knock Life appeared. Being atop the charts, he gained at last the reputation of a talented person and the creator of urban anthems. Every album that followed after it only confirmed his status of mega-star.

Jay-Z was involved as well into the conflict with LLCool J, who blamed Jay-Z when he was the president of Deff Jam after the album of LL happened to be worse than his predecessors. There was much talk in the net about their secret war. Probably the beginning of it dates back to the early 90s when the rap battle was provoked between them. At that time Jay-Z was an unknown rapper while LL was the king of rap in the 90-s. LL enjoyed the fame as his album won Grammy then. But when the rookie Jay-Z attacked him in the rap battle, he lost in it. The conflict appeared in public in 2006 when the career of LL started declining and he openly accused Jay-Z.

According to MTV data Jay-Z was a hype man for Jaz-O at the very beginning. And later Jay-Z also worked for Big Daddy Kane as a hype man - this is a backup rapper, who is in charge of raising the excitement of the audience with call and response chants. He does everything the rap artist is not able to do. This is an interesting phenomenon in hip-hop culture and its roots can be traced beginning from the day when this genre only started to develop.

In 1999 Jay-Z works with Mic Geronimo, with American entertainer DMX, with Jeffry Atkins too, known as Ja Rule. So he was featured many times with various famous rappers, but the rap single "I Can't Get With That", which is officially considered the first one, was released with the video recorded.

When Roc-a-Fella Records was created, Jay-Z concluded a deal with the US based record label Priority, which provided the distribution of the stuff produced. The debut album was Reasonable doubt and African-American producer DJ Premier provided it with his beats. DJ Clark Kent also contributed his help and helped Jay-Z break into a music industry. He featured an appearance as a guest with this rapper at the period when Jay-Z was not known much. This was a single Can I Get Open. This was just a start of their further cooperation in a number of tracks, such as "Brooklyn Finest", "Coming of Age", "Cashmere Songs". It is interesting to learn that he is a cousin of the famous American rapper Foxy Brown.

The Black Album was the last studio work by Jay-Z and was promoted this way too. You will not hear it often - a goodbye album of a rapper, but you will not meet often the rapper of this kind as Jay-Z. As a rule, the players in this game are ousted before they decide to quit. The situation with Jay-Z is absolutely different.

There is a ranking of the most selling albums and every week the Billboard magazine publishes the top, which includes 200 positions. This way the level of popularity of groups or separate singers is assessed. The ranking is named Billboard 200. Jay-Z was on the 23 position when Reasonable Doubt was released, but in spite of it, the critics acclaimed it. It even entered the list of the greatest albums ever created according to Rolling Stone's data. The list is created by means of voting of people who deal with music industry: musicians, critics and other influential figures in music industry. Every one of them wrote a list of his favorite albums and so the list was created. The special system of calculation was developed then specially for this event and the whole list made up 1600 item. The albums belonged to different genres: rock, heavy metal, punk, blues, jazz, folk, hip-hop and other possible variations of styles. Later even the separate book was published with this list, so Jay-Z was on the 248th position there. Later he managed to obtain the platinum status, with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) awards certification, calculated on a number either albums or singles sold. For instance, if the singer sells 500,000 unites (this is the required quantity in the US at present time), he gets the gold record. The category was named after precious material, there are also platinum and diamond categories, though some countries possess the silver category too, but it does not exist in the United States. The records are in fact vinyl with metallic painted coating. Jay-Z's album was sold up to 1,000,000 units therefore the platinum status was earned.

Having made a deal with Def Jam, the second album In My Lifetime Vol.1 is released by Jay-Z in 1997. And though the critical reviews were quite positive, this commercial image of his was not accepted by the wide audience. This album is more pop-oriented than his previous works and it also received the same platinum certifications from the Recording Industry Association. The beatmaker was Puff Daddy's Bad Boy that is why it had different kind of sound: the glossier one. Though his associates DJ Premier and Ski made their contributions too and their beats were also added to the album. 1.2 millions of copies were sold afterwards. There was a slight deviation in it from the Mafioso rap he used to make before, which is also called crime rap. It flourished at that time and included hardcore rap which can be characterized by more aggressive sound with confrontation in lyrics, therefore it reminded gangsta rap. Jay-Z with his album In My Lifetime Vol.1 turned to different kind of rap and this album was the sign that new era is coming - the era of "Jiggy" and it was the first attempt to begin it.

Jay-Z was gradually becoming a legendary figure, the one who is breaking stereotypes in the spheres established already.

As it was mentioned already the biggest popularity came to Jay-Z when he released Vol.2 Hard Knock Life. It was in 1998 and since that time his name is known in almost every home. It helped him a lot not only to become a prominent figure in the hip-hop genre, but present a force, that could change the state of matters in the musical industry. It received Grammy Award in the nomination of Best Rap Album of 1999.

Critical reviews varied greatly. The opinions were different, those who preferred the pure hip-hop were not satisfied with it completely, because they felt that there was a desire of the artist to be a success and this interfered with the quality of work. The opinions were expressed that the music in it was not that complicated as it was supposed to. They were puzzled. The compromise in their outlook was not a good solution. Besides there were too many guest stars in the album released and this was disapproved as well. Nevertheless, the album has become a classic of hip hop.

According to 5-star rating scale of the popular hip-hop music magazine "The Source", the album received 4,5 mics and this is almost ideal result taking into consideration that not so many albums were awarded with five mics (the Blueprint later received 5 mics)

In 2000 Jay-Z releases the 5th album "Dynasty: Roc La Familia", which was supposed to be a compilation of tracks, performed by Roc-a-Fella artists to serve as a showcase, but somehow it happened that it again turned into album of Jay-Z. Though a lot of other performers participate in it, such as Freeway, Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek and in spite of the fact that there were guests in it, all the same the lead single of it "I Just Wanna Love You" became one of the most successful hits and took #11 on the US standard singles popularity chart Billboard Hot 100. There were only three guest appearances, Snoop Dogg, Scarface and R.Kelly. This was made on purpose to leave more room for the family of Roc-a-Fella. During the work over the album Jay-Z decided to apply to promising producers, who are not so famous then. Neptunes, Bink!, Kaney West and Just Blaze. All of them became famous thanks to this work. Thanks to the efforts of Kaney West and Just Blaze with their soul samples, the album can be characterized like the one with smoother sound. It was well received with the public like the previous works of this talented rapper and 2 million copies of it were sold only in the United States.

The album Blueprint was released on tragic days for the United States. The terrorist attacks of September,11 made the country stricken with horror. It surely influenced the sales, they were 5% less because of the events in the country. Only one guest was invited then and it was Eminem for the song "Renegade".