![]() A continually shifting patchwork of roughly cut-up samples – clattering drums, a spidery guitar solo, jazzy clarinet – powers DOA (Death of Auto-Tune) to gripping effect. Thank You boasts lush orchestration and a propulsive turn from the rapper: it doesn't exactly say a great deal, beyond confirming that it's nice to be enormously wealthy and inhabit a jet-setting world of international celebrity, but it does so pretty spectacularly. What We Talkin' About? sets Jay-Z's voice amid huge, enveloping synths and a strange, staccato, falsetto vocal from, of all people, Luke Steele, the eyeshadow-sporting Australian singer-songwriter behind the Sleepy Jackson and Empire of the Sun. If it's hard to feel like you're experiencing a musical event of vast significance when someone's trying to flog you a Private Body Fat Analyzer at the same time, Blueprint 3 goes out of its way to suggest you are, at least at first. Fat burning furnace cuts down 3lbs of your belly using one weird old tip. ![]() You just go to a website called, where all 15 tracks are hosted, alongside the kind of low-rent banner adverts you suspect no one ever clicks on: Click here to get debt help now. ![]() You don't have to travel to a secret location or sign a document swearing you to secrecy. ![]() But The Blueprint 3 certainly doesn't arrive in a particularly grand manner, at least if you're reviewing it. He could do with making a definitive musical statement to redress the balance, which is presumably why his latest album is named as a sequel to his most definitive musical statement of all: 2001's unequivocally fantastic The Blueprint. In 2009, he's more famous than ever, which is part of the problem: he's running the risk of becoming better known as a celebrity – married to Beyoncé, friends with Chris and Gwyneth, and, as he puts it, "a small part of the reason the president is black" – than a rapper. His albums Kingdom Come and American Gangster sold, but they didn't scale the artistic heights of his pre-retirement oeuvre. His vast wealth and success might suggest otherwise, but things haven't gone entirely according to plan since the former Shawn Carter decided he hadn't retired after all. ![]() "I'm doing better than before, why would I do that?" He sounds bullish – in fairness, Jay-Z always sounds bullish, timidity not getting one terribly far in the world of hip-hop – but there's a detectable defensiveness about that remark. "P eople talking about, Hova take it back," raps Jay-Z on his 11th studio album. ![]()
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