MAGNACARTA REVIEW

The Rap God brings us the Magna Carta Holy Grail

Release date: July 4^th 2013

Born Shawn Corey Carter on April 12, 1969, Jay-Z was raised by a single mother, Gloria Carter. He grew up in New York and had experienced the tough life on the streets. On attending high school he began to explore his rap skill and take it to another level.  Alongside partners from his early group Jay-Z began an independent label called Roc-a-Fella Records, Later Roc-a-Fella folding into Def Jam Recordings. Every one of jay’s albums has sold millions and combined with his endless list of singles its no doubt that he is mass published on the radio and TV. 

Jay-z isn’t a musician that works on a schedule, with no exception to the making of the Magna Carta Holy Grail album. It’s as if he threw it all together Within weeks… oh wait, He did! (3 weeks to be precise to finish an album).  

'Oceans' track 5 on the album was recorded with lyrics on it pretty much finished well over a year ago. As soon as Watch the Throne was finished. He already had the track and the hook to 'Holy Grail' back then. He had pieces of music and ideas and then with the help of Timbaland the album was created in a pretty short period of time,

Before I start a similar comparison let me just say that kanye west is a massive artist with a unique style and being a kanye west fan I will not be hating on him in any way. Yeezus kanyes album a medley of several genres merged creatively into one truly amazing mind F**k. West is just plain mad. The last major release involving these two hip hop figures was Watch the Throne. With these new albums, Magna Carta Holy Grail and Yeezus, it seemed like Jay Z searched through the content to get the throne more polished meanwhile, West on the other hand decided to smash the throne apart and go off on his own accord and create madness.

I felt that Magna Carta Holy Grail was definitely the safer and more boring album of the two. West however has never been a great rapper, he relies on publicity stunt verses.  He’s always been a terrible singer, but he’s also always knows his way around production. From the very opening track to the end of the album you can tell most of his work relies in the production and West makes it very apparent from the start that he’s not going to censor himself.

I’m going to review a section of songs out of the album (not all of them as I will be here all week) so lets start with the opening track Holy Grail (feat. Justin Timberlake). This song is a great example of a lot of really effective rhythmic contrasts while still keeping a melodic hook, both vocally and instrumentally, that keeps your interest throughout the whole song. Justin Timberlake’s part is catching and grabs your attention and makes you listen more into what this song is about, but when Jay drops in hard repeatedly referencing Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, most notably at the end of the second verse and the following bridge: "I know nobody to blame, Kurt Cobain, I did it myself ... And we all just entertainers, And we're stupid and contagious, and we all just entertainers." Ultimately Jay is entertaining us, feeding us those popular images and popular names we love and making himself as one of the greats, whether dead or alive.

Picasso baby produced by Timbaland, Adrian Younge and J-Roc is a driving track and contains a sample from Adrian Younge’s “Sirens” His appreciation for the European art culture comes through in this song.  The rapper can't help but speak of his wife Beyonce only two tracks in to the album "Sleeping every night next to Mona Lisa, the modern day version, with better features." Comparing her to a Picasso painting and reminding everyone how big he really is. About halfway through the track in the third verse a wicked electric guitar comes in and adds some beef to the track giving that “99problems” feeling.  

So who is Tom Ford?

Thomas Carlyle also known as Tom Ford is an American fashion designer and film director and gained international fame for his creation of the Tom Ford label. Both Jay-Z and wife Beyoncé are known to be Tom Ford fans, with the former wearing one of the designer's suits in Justin Timberlake's 'Suit and Tie' video.
This track is built upon MIA's vocal cadence from the "Bad Girls" single and if you were looking for a club single from this album. I guess this is the one with bouncing beats throughout, there are almost Nintendo sounding elements due to the broken electronics present and Fused with hip hop and mixed with jays lyrical melody there’s no doubt this is going to be big

Rick Ross is a heavyweight rapper, no pun intended, delivering hooks that knock out the speakers and reins the streets. “FuckWithMeYouKnowIGotIt” is a very cut and paste track where Rick Ross repeats the title of the track in his very straightforward manner it only really starts to get interesting when jay drops his bars you can tell it’s not his style not a usual beat for him but his bragging flow helps him deliver but he did a very good job and made it work.

Oceans featuring Frank Ocean is a stunning track, with Ocean’s smooth voice playing perfect counterpoint to Jay-Z’s roughness. Heavily orchestrated through percussion and, the talented pair show a deep connection to the sea as the track finds Jay and Frank yachting in the Atlantic and musing over the history of the international slave trade... Overall a great listen for a RNB track but the production side lacks slightly and could take a few listens to be liked. This was the first song that Jay recorded for the album as Ocean and he already had it laid down in 2011.

F.U.T.W. Fuck up The World is the 6^th track on the album. It starts off jazzy with high chimes, repetitive flute riffs and then mixed with bass drums. Powerful song of him storytelling how a Blackman could make so much and be the face of some many things. You can tell Jay gets kind of emotional on this one but there’s no doubt Old-School hip-hop fans are going to love this track more than some of his old albums. 

Since jay turned 40 plus, he’s sort of been the old-timer who couldn’t help but laugh at the foolishness of the younger generation. In somewhere in America this is the case it starts off as a very retro beat with sparse instrumentation and use of only Jay on the track with bragging about back in his day things would be different. “Somewhereinamerica” is a simple reflection of a jay’s life to show off his wealth and success.  The jazz instrumentation works well with hip hop beat and jays bars the flow is as timeless as a jazz vocalist and has an easy listen feel to it probably down to the slow 86 bpm tempo. Since release this track it has gone viral due to the ending where he raps “Somewhere in America, Miley Cyrus is still twerking.” Causing a twitter war to show how hip-hop can influence America and his best example is a Disney Channel country singing white girl.

Heaven probably the most controversial song on the album it starts with a Justin Timberlake hook over Adrian Younge’s drums and it opens up a battle between heaven and jays hell lyrics. Jay references R.E.M’s track losing my religion could this be Jay-Z digging at Illuminati theories and religion. This song breaks down to what jay believes is heaven and hell. “Hell is losing your baby daughter for 3 minutes” video with jay talking about meaning of heaven and hell see link (http://hypetrak.com/2013/06/jay-z-discusses-meaning-behind-heaven).

Part 2 on the run is a romantic duet between jay and his wife beyonce the two have no problem expressing there love for each other through music. This is the softest track on the album where they talk about if they were outlaws evading the police but never leaving one another as beyonce sings “I don't care if we on the run Baby as long I'm next to you”. Also jay raps “matching tatts, this ink don’t come off” this is a reference to the two of them got matching tattoos to accommodate their wedding date. Jay also references Tupac at the end of verse 3 “its me and you against the world” referring to Tupac’s album/song “Me against the world.”

Jay-Z Blue (Daddy Dearest) is probably the saddest song on the album and he uses anxieties over his daughter to reflect on his own upbringing where his father wasn’t there. "Father never taught me how to be a father," this is jay thinking about that situation when his father left and the “thought alone fucks with me” and saying just thinking about it messes with his head. You can tell jay gets deep with this track s he’s not afraid of telling us his emotions “This relationship is complicated all I know is we aint speaking everyday” this refers to jay and beyonces marriage, as they are both successful and famous devoting there time to music such as touring and gigs etc but jay is afraid of his marriage falling because of it.

Nickels and dimes is a glimpse into jays life other than the music we see a lot of drug dealing references “I gave some money to this guy, he got high as hell, now I’m part of the problem far as I could tell” I believe he’s asking himself who did he help in this situation the guy or the drug dealer as one point in his life that was him. “with eyes wide shut, I could cook up two bricks” could jay be talking about cooking up making crack with his eyes shut here but has better means of earning his money. The sample gives a good side to the track as he talks about the perception of him being the hero and the villain at the same time and throughout he is explaining his reasons for his actions.

The songs I have reviewed are the ones I feel are the most important for the success of the album. as a whole the album is pretty dam good, a sort of traditional concept album it tell the story of jays life the good bad and the troubles he’s been through after his 12th studio album he is still keeping it real, is jay ready to pass on the king of hip hop name, I mean let’s be honest he really doesn’t need to keep making music he is idolized and is an icon in the hip hop world.

“And it’s not like Jigga needed to worry about making a few dollars off the back of this set. He had all of them to start with, and guaranteed sales figures, too.”  http://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/jay-z-magna-carta-holy-grail 

On releasing the album 5 days earlier exclusive to Samsung app users what do other listeners think about this album has he done us proud I mean he seriously drops in big with a platinum album before its official release date releasing his music free to the listeners and taking the $5million from a business corporation only jay could of thought of that.

So… what’s all this twerking about?

 The rapper disses Miley Cyrus newfound twerking abilities on his track, "Somewhere in America.

"When I was talking Instagram, Last thing you wanted was your picture snapped/Feds still lurking, They see I'm still putting work in/Cause somewhere in America, Miley Cyrus is still twerkin', HA!" Jay-Z rhymes. "Twerk, twerk, twerk, twerk, Twerk, Miley, Miley, twerk/Twerk, Twerk, Miley, Miley, Miley, twerk/Twerk, yeah, ugh-huh, Twerk, Miley, Miley, Miley / Only in America."

The star admitted that she's been working extremely hard on mastering the art of twerking too. 

'I've been practicing probably for the past two years, in my own time in my living room,' she said.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2356477/Jay-Z-laughs-Miley-Cyrus-twerking-skills-track-new-album-Magna-Carter-Holy-Grail.html#ixzz3AwB0zJAh 

Overall this album has a lot of themes and is different to “watch the Thrones” however the underlying beats and the catchy rhymes and witty stanzas are well produced and work successfully together the delivery of jays raps is clear and is as if he spells his point across to us over all top album and created a lot of publicity through his words and actions and definitely in my top list of favourite albums.