Spin: When did you finally realize that Jay Z's discography is borderline trash?

[Billy Ocean]

Dirt off your shoulders was and always will be trash to me and yes the best is hella overrated. fukk timbaland. Imma go on a whole rant in another thread about how overrated timbaland is and how much trash was put out in the 2000s that ppl hype bc of nostalgia or whack ass trends at the time.

Dirt Off Your Shoulder beat is wack. Never liked it. Sounds like some Nintendo cartridge shyt. And I wholeheartedly agree with you on Timbo being overrated. At least as a Hip Hop producer.

 

[Whips-n-Chains]

I like a lot of Boom Bap Hip Hop, but it's a dated sound. Still, you wouldn't catch me saying it didn't age well. There's a large sector of people who consider that music ancient and would claim it didn't age well simply because they don't like it and never really rocked with it like that. If someone posted that Gangstarr's "Mass Appeal" was garbage, they'd get roasted.

My point is there's a HUGE double standard on this board and ANYTHING commercial specifically music from 1997- present is low hanging fruit for posters to dismiss as trendy or didn't age well. Flat and shallow argument as Boom Bap was trendy as well. Same as G Funk and a lot of styles. Did classics come out of them? Certainly, but it doesn't change the fact. Even further is this, people claim Jay Z worked with trendy producers. Pretty much every producer he worked with was trendy, which includes Premo (who is a Top 5 Hip Hop producer). There was a point where he was every major East Coast release. Then after 2001, that changed.

The transformation to digital beats lead to a lot of shyt not aging well, sounding like a time capsule of 1998 or 2001 for example (Think NORE superthug or Fabolous first album), where as Supreme Clientel sounds timeless, you could tell a new listener this shyt just dropped and they'd believe you.

 

[Whips-n-Chains]

No cap, I've only attempted to listen to only one of Jay-Z's albums (Reasonable Doubt), and I walked away feeling underwhelmed.

I'll give The Black Album a spin.

Reasonable Doubt takes a little time to grow on you...It was hyped up to me from a big Hov fan, I copped and listened in about 98 and I was like "breh this is your favorite album ever?" I was really only feeling Dead Presidents at first but it grew to become a personal favorite in my ~top 15 or so...

ppl are brainwashed retroactively to believe RD was some instant-classic, game-changing release...it was an afterthought in 96, especially compared to highly hyped albums like IWW, Ironman, All Eyez On Me, Makaveli

 

[The G.O.D II]

RD- Okay but overrated by Jay and his fans
Vol 1- wack af
Vol 2- overrated and has aged like white women
Vol 3- wack. Intro should not be your best song. Swizz beats is garbage
Dynasty-Solid. Beanie saved this
BP1- Classic
BP2- Bloated crap and even condensed on later versions not good
BA- Good album
KC- Solid and his most underrated work
AG- Good
BP3- Pure garbage
MCHG- This one gets unnecessary hate but it’s not his worst. I would put this on the level of Vol 3
4:44- Boring pretentious crap

 

[Stick Up Kid]

Hov doesn’t have an album that’s Top 25 all time

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Dirt Off Your Shoulder beat is wack. Never liked it. Sounds like some Nintendo cartridge shyt. And I wholeheartedly agree with you on Timbo being overrated. At least as a Hip Hop producer.

The crazy shyt is there was better beats Timbo played for Jay too. I also think he's overrated as a hiphop producer BTW but as an overall producer I do think he's dope and creative as hell.

This video should auto-start at 0:44. Way doper to me than Dirt. I think Luda took the beat he plays at 1:38.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

I like a lot of Boom Bap Hip Hop, but it's a dated sound. Still, you wouldn't catch me saying it didn't age well. There's a large sector of people who consider that music ancient and would claim it didn't age well simply because they don't like it and never really rocked with it like that. If someone posted that Gangstarr's "Mass Appeal" was garbage, they'd get roasted.

My point is there's a HUGE double standard on this board and ANYTHING commercial specifically music from 1997- present is low hanging fruit for posters to dismiss as trendy or didn't age well. Flat and shallow argument as Boom Bap was trendy as well. Same as G Funk and a lot of styles. Did classics come out of them? Certainly, but it doesn't change the fact. Even further is this, people claim Jay Z worked with trendy producers. Pretty much every producer he worked with was trendy, which includes Premo (who is a Top 5 Hip Hop producer). There was a point where he was every major East Coast release. Then after 2001, that changed.

You're the homie and you post excellent takes, but I wanna just address a key difference, IMO.

I agree with the first part, 100%. Old school boom bap is dated, but I think one of the reasons people don't say that it didn't age well is because it's made up of samples from samples that always have and always will speak to people---singing voices, horns, keys, guitars, etc. Even G-Funk beats were largely sampled from classics like Parliament that was live music people got down with and loved.

The Swizz and Timbo beats from like 98-01 or so were sort of made in contrast to that boom bap style, and didn't stay in fashion for very long. And the Casio era Swizz joints just sounded super thin and cheesy. I don't even remember anyone loving those beats back in that era, to be honest. People fukked with the music Swizz made because they loved DMX, Jay, and The Lox. But producer heads never fukked with Swizz the way they fukked with Preemo, RZA, Pete, etc.

I remember after Dynasty and Blueprint a lot of people being really happy, like "fukk that was a rough few years for production but we made it through."

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Put you on the Game, another garbage timbo beat

Timbo hip hop beats were overrated as fukk

Put you on Game is way doper than Dirt off your Shoulder to me.

Op is bugging though I feel this way about Fabolous and Jada personally.

Yeah they both have super sub-par catalogues compared to how dope they are

 

[TheDarceKnight]

I can't front, I fukking LOVED that beat in 04-05 Was one of the handful of timbo beats I liked, but none of this shyt aged well, nor did the neptunes ish...it all sounds like beats trying too hard to sound "futuristic," meanwhile all the sample heavy ish from 96 and prior sounds timeless af

All the mid 2000s shyt sounds like a time capsule of mid-grade music, but check the alchemist's ish from then or before and it STILL sounds fresh.

I largely agree, but I think some Neptunes still sounds fresh and creative though. Especially their Clipse work. Hell Hath No Fury still sounds like no batch of beats that dropped before or after IMO

 

[JustCKing]

You're the homie and you post excellent takes, but I wanna just address a key difference, IMO.

I agree with the first part, 100%. Old school boom bap is dated, but I think one of the reasons people don't say that it didn't age well is because it's made up of samples from samples that always have and always will speak to people---singing voices, horns, keys, guitars, etc. Even G-Funk beats were largely sampled from classics like Parliament that was live music people got down with and loved.

The Swizz and Timbo beats from like 98-01 or so were sort of made in contrast to that boom bap style, and didn't stay in fashion for very long. And the Casio era Swizz joints just sounded super thin and cheesy. I don't even remember anyone loving those beats back in that era, to be honest. People fukked with the music Swizz made because they loved DMX, Jay, and The Lox. But producer heads never fukked with Swizz the way they fukked with Preemo, RZA, Pete, etc.

I remember after Dynasty and Blueprint a lot of people being really happy, like "fukk that was a rough few years for production but we made it through."

I see the point maybe with Swizz, because he was in limbo during the sped-up Soul sampling era. His sound wasn't in demand as much and he even tried his hand with sped up soul samples with Styles P's "I Get High".

Meanwhile, Timbaland and The Neptunes remained dominant throughout that entire era. Tim was even on The Blueprint. Timbaland was still on at least one track on seemingly every major release even to the degree of other producers like Kanye getting his assistance.

 

[UpNext]

Honestly in 2022 the only Jay albums I can actually listen to are Reasonable Doubt, Volume 2 and Black Album. Everything else is trash p. much. I can listen to a few songs here and there but sitting the thing down and pressing play. Foh

 

[TheDarceKnight]

At this point I don't think Jay could put together a run like Nas has with the King’s Disease trilogy. Jay can still put together a verse that gets people talking though.

I don't think he can either, and I was mostly a Jay fan over a Nas fan back in the day.

I just don't think Jay has anything to talk about for a whole album. I think he's more out of touch being a billionaire as well. That might not be a popular take, but I stand on it. There's a huge difference between being in the M club and being in the B club, and I just think Jay is so far removed from anything regular folks have to deal with.

I know that he listens to a ton of Boldy James and Alchemist, Conway, and even Mach-Hommy. I'd love for Jay to lock in with one or two producers and shut himself away from the world for a month, get inspired, and bang out an album that way. I don't see it happening, though.

Jay has always seemed especially unable to drop albums without heavy inspiration, and every time he's tried to force it the results ahve been bad (like Kingdom Come and MCHG.) I think he'll drop an occasional God Did style feature verse every now and then, but I think 444 might be his last studio album unless he gets a serious dose of inspiration.

 

[Larry]

ya'll be having some of the worst performative opinions on the internet.


who ya'll tryna impress with these takes, each other? seek help

 

[TheDarceKnight]

Honestly in 2022 the only Jay albums I can actually listen to are Reasonable Doubt, Volume 2 and Black Album. Everything else is trash p. much. I can listen to a few songs here and there but sitting the thing down and pressing play. Foh

No Blueprint? Funny enough if you throw Blueprint in there, Jay listed those as the best 4 albums in his own catalogue as well.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

I can play it, I just have to remove everything produced by Rick Rock. The only listenable beat by him is “change the game” smh. They should have just let JB and bink do the whole thing.

Squeeze First is dope to me and I think Rick Rock produced that joint