Consider that MCHG was made by a 43-year-old rapper who is 17 years deep into a highly celebrated discography, and that it will surely go on to become his 13th no. 1 album. Or that it arrives as Jay-Z prepares to launch what will likely rank among the year’s most successful tours with one of the world’s top pop stars, Justin Timberlake. In the history of hip-hop, where nearly every career arc sinks toward irrelevance after about a decade or so (if you’re lucky), Magna Carta … Holy Grail finds Jay-Z still on top of the rap game as he approaches the start of his third decade. MCHG is not The Blueprint, but it is a blueprint for long-term survival in a notoriously fickle genre that Jay-Z is creating as he goes along.
So, in a sense, Magna Carta … Holy Grail really is writing new rules — sorry, #newrules — for how a rapper can maintain a prominent place in pop culture at the dawn of his mellowed-out middle-aged period. Notice how Jay-Z has stopped comparing himself to other rappers; MCHG references Johnny Cash, Kurt Cobain, Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” and R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” all of which had their day before most of his hip-hop contemporaries (and audience) were even born.1 As Jay-Z enters uncharted waters for hip-hop, these classic-rock totems are his only guides forward. I’d like to suggest another: the Rolling Stones’ 1981 album, Tattoo You. Like MCHG, Tattoo You was released 17 years into a once-trailblazing artist’s career. Tattoo You was also accompanied by a high-profile tour of arenas and stadiums, sponsored by the bargain-basement cologne company Jovan — a controversial move that some in the media argued was damaging to the band’s credibility.2
Mick Jagger had just turned 38 when Tattoo You came out — practically a spring chicken compared with Jay-Z — and the idea of rock bands continuing to play concerts into their 40s, 50s, 60s (!), or even 70s (?!) was inconceivable at the time. But Tattoo You and the subsequent tour was the door through which the Stones (and then many others) stepped into the second (and third and possibly fourth) acts of their career. It was where the Rolling Stones became “the Rolling Stones,” a larger-than-life rock-and-roll theme park that always packs ’em in in spite of never really justifying the overpriced ticket and torturously long bathroom lines. Jay-Z similarly presents himself on MCHG as an artist whose job is to be richer and more famous than anybody else in hip-hop. Jay-Z has never been the most relatable rapper, but now he’s pushing an idea of himself that’s part caricature and part protective shell. His hope is that nobody notices the well-moneyed family man with nothing left to say behind the rap-superstar curtain.