Jay-Z - 'Magna Carta Holy Grail'

[Maximilyan]

So Jay really making people write new rules.....

 

[FyHunnit]

DF?? No song have been released yet? *leaves*

 

[Stew]

Linebacker from the Skins says he's got the album

This ain't eeem right

 

[1CK1S]

hopefully the album will leak by wednesday!!!

 

[Maximilyan]

Lol niccas hoping for the album to leak 1 day before release date.

 

[1of1]

Didn't Read

Wait I never read shit from Jay Z b/c he usually makes music.

 

[Stew]

 

[ImTheKangRoundHere]

oh well gotta wait until the 4th

 

[Maximilyan]

Photoshop???

 

[Stew]

Photoshop???

Nah Killer Mike screenshotted it and said "Nah, Im good" lol

 

[S2J]

Photoshop???

Nah Killer Mike screenshotted it and said "Nah, Im good" lol

That aint just Jay tho. A lot of apps have these crazy permissions that many people overlook.

Groupon app said they can activate your camera at any time and take pics. Crazy world man...

 

[KillaCham]

Very interested to hear this.

 

[esco soprano]

Rick Rubin Details "Magna Carta Holy Grail" Specifics

As the days leading up to Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail begin to wither way, the Brooklyn rapper has remained relatively tight-lipped about the project although he has continued to treat fans to an occasional lyric sheet from the project. Thankfully, producer Rick Rubin, who is noticeably present in Samsung’s ads for Magna Carta Holy Grail, has offered up his thoughts on the project.

During an exclusive interview with XXLMag.com, Rubin referred to Magna Carta Holy Grail as a “traditional Hip Hop record” and commented on the album being far different than Kanye West’s newly-released sixth studio album, Yeezus.

“I liked what I heard, but it was a little difficult—after just coming from the Kanye sessions—to listen to Jay’s album, because they’re so different. I was in a very alternative and progressive headspace, and Jay’s record is a more traditional hip-hop record,” Rubin revealed.

Rubin also clarified the reason behind his presence in Samsung’s Magna Carta Holy Grail commercials. According to the Def Jam co-founder, who did not lend his production talents to Jay-Z’s 12th studio album, he was present for the filming of a documentary.

“The point of me being in the commercials was that he was filming a documentary and he asked me—I imagine he’s just comfortable talking to me—to come listen to the songs with him and just talk about the songs. Just listen to it and talk about it, and that’s what we did. It was fun.”

Magna Carta Holy Grail will be released exclusively to Samsung users on July 4 and will be made available for purchase on July 7.
http://www.hiphopdx.com/m/index.php?s=news&id=24516

But at least one of those beats in the commercial sounded just like one of his beats. I swear, but oh well.

 

[DarthRozay]

lol how come people don't understand it's not going to leak because the only way it'll be available (at first) is through the app?

 

[Maximilyan]

But still someone must have the album somewhere on some pc.

 

[Stew]

lol how come people don't understand it's not going to leak because the only way it'll be available (at first) is through the app?

Cause we live in a digital world. Obviously its getting better but somebody got that shit!

 

[almighty breeze]

i know Rick Rubin didnt mean it that way and for a nice change of pace in the convo in here. Rubin put in his work. But i really hate the condescending tone spoken toward and describing hip hop albums

Every other genre of music get to be called "progressive" because they use laserlike & robotic sounds instead of a real life drum based sound- Yet for any hip hop album to be considered innovative it has to leave the realm of hip hop & incorporate music THEY'RE comfortable exalting. what the hell is the authority or barometer

When it works or is good everyone wins but that has to be square one for a Hip Hop album & no other genre has to follow that template.

Dont reply tellin me how stagnant rap is or bring up Future, Trinidad or 2Chainz- i get that, but Hip Hop & Rap is always looked at with the down your nose below your shoulder dismissal.

What the fuck makes all of indie rock & punk/dubstep shit sooo much more 'progressive' and cutting edge??

just the placement, tone & usage of the words traditional, standard when it comes to hip hop is almost this scoff like "nigger shit"

What made say Nirvana so much more progressive than Tribe? Even Scarface. Who was more progressive in the late 90s than OutKast & Missy? i know they get their props but its almosts always at the expense of someone like Redman or Beanie Sigel when it comes to more mainstream publication.. that whole sentiment is bullshit

rant over

 

[almighty breeze]

oh since i mentioned Tribe. judging by the lyrics that Versus track is looking like it might have a "Sucka Nigga" sample which is easily one of the doper things that can happen in the world

 

[StillFaggyAF]

i wanna share this good article about Jay-Z as a brand not a rapper
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/edito...ity-jay-z-s-holy-grail-of-advertorial-hip-hop

by Omar Burgess

On Sunday, June 16, during game five of the NBA Finals, the pop culture zeitgeist was dominated by the two teams participating in the series—the eventual champion Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs—and to a lesser extent, Kanye West’s latest album, Yeezus. Then, Jay-Z stepped in to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming. Hov and the good people at Samsung made a declaration, “We need to write the new rules.”

Since his official debut in 1996, Jay-Z has been a relevant cultural figure and arbiter of all that is trendy in mainstream Hip Hop. We’ve seen this from early co-signs of Cristal, $850 Manolo Blahnik Timbs, and more recently, “Rollies that don’t tick-tock.” Jay-Z’s lyrics have likely appeased companies like these, as well as impacted their sales. And even when things went sour with brands Jay gave his stamp of approval to (observe how shouting out Belvedere and Cristal respectively gave way to Armadale and Ace of Spades), he just changed gears and backed another brand.

As a fan of Jay-Z’s early work, I’ve watched his current ventures with RocNation Sports and his partnering with Samsung to give away one million free copies of Magna Carta Holy Grail. I’ve seen him applying the Jay-Z touch of formerly unpaid endorsements cloaked as trendsetting be applied to legitimate business ventures. And, if Jay-Z’s recent moves—direct forays into advertising and sports branding and unofficially campaigning for President Barack Obama to name a few—are any indication, I think he is now much more valuable as an ambassador for Hip Hop than a contemporary, competitive emcee.

“Fresh to death in Moschino / Coach bag / Lookin’ half Black and Filipino, fakin’ no jax / Got you a beeper to feel important / Surrounded your feet in Joanie Dega’s and Charles Jourdan...” –Jay-Z, “Ain’t No Nigga.”



I’ve always felt Jay-Z’s mission has always been the same. When he dropped Reasonable Doubt in 1996, it wasn’t about getting famous; it was about getting on top. His moneywise rhymes represented an authentic, artistic talent fostered by an upbringing in the Marcy Projects and a history of drug dealing. Singles from the album like “Feelin’ It” and “Dead Presidents” balanced mainstream inclinations with honest, personal expression. Similarly, On “D’Evils,” he famously asserted, “Nine-to-five is how you survive, I ain’t trying to survive / I’m tryina live it to the limit, and love it alive,” hammering home his money-hungry persona. Ingenuity, coupled with an all-star roster of contributing producers helped cement Reasonable Doubt as a notable release next to other albums in 1996, like Nas’ It Was Written and Tupac’s All Eyez On Me.

Back then, I don’t think Jay-Z was so much shouting out brands as he was trying to link himself via association with the upper echelon. I still remember when he had the umlaut above the letter A in his name. Rappers have been flossing since Eric B & Rakim were posing in Dapper Dan outfits. But, to me, it felt as if Jay was differentiating himself through the brands with which he was associated. Back on “Imaginary Player,” he boasted, “I gotta be like the pioneer to this shit, you know. I was popping that Cristal when all y’all niggas thought it was beer and shit...wearing that platinum shit when all y’all chicks thought it was silver and shit.”

True to his word, Jay was ahead of the pack in terms of flossing. If other rappers were wearing Rolexes, he was rocking an Audemars Piguet. If the competition was pulling up in Mercedes Benzes and BMWs, Jay brought out the drop top Bentley Azure. As the flossing and unofficial brand endorsements continued, I thought the lyrical introspection waned a bit. Jay-Z maintained steady popularity with singles reinforcing his lust for money and women, while still providing catchy beats and hooks. As a listener, the new approach felt vapid to me. But Jay continued to drop reminders that his plan was now a two-pronged strategy.

 

[StillFaggyAF]

“I do this for my culture / To let them know what a nigga look like when a nigga in a roadster / Show them how to move in a room full of vultures / Industry is shady, it needs to be taken over / Label owners hate me, I’m raising the status quo up / I’m overcharging niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush / Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hoed us / We can talk, but money talks, so talk more bucks...” –Jay-Z, “Izzo (H.O.V.A.).”



I always found it interesting that one of Jay-Z’s more profound lines about Hip Hop’s history and his place within it was buried in a shallow hit like “Izzo (H.O.V.A.).” On the most basic level, the single was a commercial success; it peaked at the #8 spot on Billboard magazine’s “Hot 100” while in the midst of a 20-week run. On the other hand, this was Jay-Z’s case for increased cultural relevance. I thought it was Jay explaining that he wasn’t just amassing wealth for sport as if he were Donald Trump. He links himself with The Cold Crush Brothers, who were one of Hip Hop’s pioneering groups. But the vast majority of people outside of Hip Hop weren’t (and still aren’t) familiar with them. Part of that is because Big Bank Hank of the Sugarhill Gang stole some of Cold Crush member Grandmaster Caz’s rhymes and used the unaccredited bars on “Rapper’s Delight.” But part of their lack of recognition and commercial compensation was also rooted in a bitter label dispute between Tuff City and Profile Records, which stunted the sales of their 1984 hit “Fresh, Wild, Fly & Bold.” So I thought Jay-Z was trying to toe the line between establishing and maintaining an amount of cultural significance while assuring that he didn’t get financially cheated like so many of Hip Hop’s founding fathers. This was something we saw pre-Blueprint on singles like “Come And Get Me,” but it appeared more frequently after “Izzo (H.O.V.A.).”

Fittingly, another thing that appeared more often in the post-Blueprint era was official brand endorsements. The talk of Belvedere vodka–the brand Jay name checked on songs like “Get Your Mind Right” and “Fiesta (Remix)”–gave way to Armadale. Since Roc-a-fella bought the domestic distribution rights to the Scottish vodka in 2002, it only made since to plug the in-house brand. Roughly two years later, Jay-Z signed an endorsement deal with Reebok’s RBK division for an undisclosed amount. To me, the release of the Reebok S. Carter shoe marked one of the moments where Jay-Z not only understood his power as a trendsetter, but he also harnessed that power to boost his net worth. These were the kinds of moves that forshadowed the 2008 partnership between Jay and Steve Stoute as co-chairmen of Translation Advertising. Again, I can’t say I was as much of a fan of the music from that era, but I can say I definitely understood there was a plan in place. What was Jay-Z’s ultimate goal though?

“I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars / They criticized me for it, yet they all yell ‘holla’ / If skills sold, truth be told, I’d probably be / Lyrically Talib Kweli / Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense / But I did 5 mill, I ain’t been rhyming like Common since...” –Jay-Z, “Moment Of Clarity”

I think the above bars, on what I and many others feel was Jay-Z’s last album of worth–The Black Album–lay out the strategy. All subsequent works showcased a noticeably slower, deliberate flow and rhyme scheme, and many critics felt things sort of bottomed out with 2006’s Kingdom Come. If you subscribe to the theory that Kingdom Come was Hov’s lyrical nadir, then it may have been the beginning of his financial apex. By the time Jay-Z channeled Michael Jordan circa 2002 with his grand comeback to Hip Hop, Fortune magazine estimated his net worth at $320 million. Previously, Jay had hinted at the notion that his “death” in the 2004 music video for “99 Problems” was in fact a depiction of his artistic reincarnation. But if that wasn’t clear enough, I thought his infamous line, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man” from the remix to “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” certainly was. Jay-Z evolved from being a trendsetter, to a bona fide pitch man. Reebok gave him a shoe, Def Jam temporarily gave him the presidency of the label (along with the masters to Reasonable Doubt) and Budweiser gave him a lucrative check to become the co-brand director of Budweiser Select. There was nothing under the table about those deals.

While songs like “Moment Of Clarity,” “The Bounce” and “Come And Get Me” hinted at it, I thought Jay-Z had a very direct, two-tiered approach to the second half of his career. I think that somewhere in between The Blueprint and The Black Album Jay-Z made a conscious decision to focus more on net worth, cultural impact and branding than lyrics. The tradeoff was that Jay could use his wealth and cultural capital to further promote the culture of Hip Hop and fund social initiatives instead of being a socially conscious rapper. As for the rhymes, he could pick and choose the times when he wanted to tap back into the intricate Reasonable Doubt style, subject matter and delivery.

To me, the question becomes how do you quantify the influence of emcees like Talib Kweli, Common, dead prez or others that have been tabbed with the conscious label? I don’t know. But I do have a rough idea how you quantify the influence of someone with 12 number one albums and a net worth that Forbes.com estimates at $450 million. The latter is a person who can repeatedly and openly admit to selling crack yet still help an incumbent senator become president by adding a bit of cultural cache. I don’t think you can be featured on terrible but profitable songs for charitable causes alongside U2 members such as “Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)” without that post-Blueprint shift. And while I’d admit that Jay was definitely self-serving at points, few people have eloquently (and popularly) articulated the case for Rap as poetry the way Jay-Z did on the Dream Hampton-assisted Decoded. Like them or not, I’m not sure those moves are even possible if Jay-Z doesn’t water down his flow for mainstream consumption and keep ringing up hit singles and number one albums. Was it worth it? Could a more lyrically intricate emcee have made the same moves? How do we compare the cultural value of a song, such as will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” or Young Jeezy’s “My President” against Jay-Z and Beyonce palling around with President Obama as he brushes the dirt off of his shoulders. I don’t have an answer for that.