Jay-Z
Is Jay-Z well-regarded as a musician? I’ve been listening to him lately, and I’ve got to say, I really like his hip-hop stylings. I don’t know if I have good taste or not in that genre, though.
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Short answer, yes, Jay-Z is very well respected in hip-hop. His latest album is not his strongest however. The Black Album is generally regarded as one of his best.
I will forever love Jay-Z for his MTV unplugged session many years ago. It was unbelievable!
He’s one of the three most consistantly high scored artists reviewed on my website, the other two being Nas and Aceyalone. Here’s my latest write-up:
http://www.rapreviews.com/archive/2006_11F_kingdom.html
What seperates him from his peers, musically, is the amount of thought he puts into what he’s saying and HOW he says it – what’s referred to as lyricism and flow. Shawn Carter’s flow is incredibly fluid, it really is musical to hear the words come out of his mouth. Then when you check the meaning behind the words you find that he’s more than just the “bling bling” materialistic rapper he’s accused of being. His topic matter covers tragedy and triumph, the loss of friends and the love of good ones, and his thoughts on the future both for the projects he grew up in, the state of hip-hop as a music and culture, and more. If you’ve never listened to a single rap album before “Jigga” would be a pretty good rapper to start with.