Magna Carta … Holy Grail has already been compared frequently — probably too frequently — with Kanye West’s Yeezus. For critics, this has been intended to diminish Jay-Z; for many rap fans, it’s a slam on Kanye. This is to say that both men have once again been highly successful in achieving what they’ve set out to do; Jay-Z is consciously courting the very people Kanye intended to alienate, just as Kanye (probably just as consciously) wanted to show exactly how he’s not like Jay. (At least not yet.) So while Team Yeezus likely interpreted Rubin’s pre-release comments about MCHG being “a more traditional hip-hop” counterpoint to the “very alternative and progressive” Yeezus as an endorsement of the latter over the former, it’s equally likely that Team MCHG saw it as the opposite. Jay-Z has made an album for people who like hip-hop but are no longer engaged with its youthful vanguard — which is precisely the same group of people most interested in spending hundreds of dollars to see Jay play live versions of hits from 10, 15, nearly 20 years ago.
Considering the genre had its first Top 40 single with “Rapper’s Delight” way back in 1979, it’s amazing that hip-hop is still so closely aligned with youth culture. This speaks both to the music’s vitality and willingness to reinvent itself, as well as to the cultural inertia that has kept a new movement from taking its place. Those most heavily invested in rap’s eternal adolescence will recoil against the encroaching fogeyism that Magna Carta … Holy Grail represents. Those people have a point: Magna Carta … Holy Grail is delivered with exquisite dispassion and elegant apathy. It’s not good so much as fine. But Jay-Z doesn’t have to win me or anybody else over. Because one day they’ll need a name rapper in his 40s (or 50s or 60s or 70s) to headline a Super Bowl halftime show. Who else are they going to call?
Article Appeared @http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9458567/jay-z-magna-carta-holy-grail-reviewed