With Justin Timberlake's flawless falsetto, Timbaland's beats swooping in like a jumbo jet and a breakdown that includes the chorus from Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Holy Grail gets Jay-Z's 12th album off to a stunning start.
It gets better: Picasso Baby's rolling waves of bass sound like a Pink Panther murder mystery, Tom Ford's off-kilter beats and name-checking could be a superior lost track from Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne collaboration, and F***withmeyouknowigotit's growling menace is as subtle as a fist in the face.
But as good as Magna Carta ... Holy Grail's sonically spectacular first four tracks are, there's one major problem the album can't shake, and it's something every hip-hop album released in what's left of 2013 will struggle with: It's no Yeezus.
What Magna Carta is, is a solid, dependable, predictable and often super-serious Jay-Z record that does everything by the book. In that, it's almost exactly like the 43-year-old's last solo record, 2009's The Blueprint 3.
It starts with an adrenaline rush of Timbaland bass tricks, then falters with a mid-section that lacks depth and direction, before petering out. And at 16 tracks, it's probably four tracks too long.
