Jay-Z: The Black Album

By REBECCA BARRY


(Herald rating: * * * *)

"They say they never really miss you 'til you dead or you gone so on that note I'm leaving after this song." Now there's a bold statement. The Black Album is supposedly Jay-Z's last, and given that most hip-hop artists shudder at the thought the charts will spit them out before their time is up, it's also his most calculated.

For one, he's hyped the album as an answer to his 1996 landmark debut, Reasonable Doubt. It's not. Nor is it the masterful collection of soul-stirring beats and confessional rhymes that was 2001's The Blueprint.

But it walks all over his last release, the sprawling excuse to make a bit of bling that was Blueprint 2. And for the first time Jay-Z fans can breathe easy that he's successfully merged the hustler with the auteur - for years he's bragged about his past vocation selling rocks while trying to make it look like he's not.

The Black Album gives an overview of his successful career, his impending retirement and the stacks of money he's made along the way. Thanks to his Roc-A-Fella empire, it's believed he can sit back to the tune of $4.4 billion.

After the bizarrely placed but explanatory Interlude, he kicks off with the album's most chirrupy track, the autobiographical December 4th (his birthday). His flow is effortless, the rhymes at their most personal as he recalls facing his parents' divorce, losing a father figure and his entry into the world of hustling.

Best of all is the narrative from his mother, Gloria, who imparts three important things - one, he was a painless birth, two, her son might just be serious about this retirement thing, and three, his humungous ego is probably the reason he's bothering with a swansong at all.

Well, she didn't say it out loud but why else would you ask Mum to help out? The next track, What More Can I Say?, only confirms that with the line, "I'm supposed to be number one on everyone's list. Let's see what happens when I no longer exist."

This is a guy who calls himself Hova, after all.

Still, a handful of tracks seem unnecessary - the Neptunes-produced Change Clothes and Allure (they're funky, why does everyone have to work with them?), and the predictably minor-key progressions of Eminem's vaudeville-style Moment of Clarity. Justify My Thug, an interpolation of Madonna's breathy hit, does little more than raise an unintended laugh.

But most of the producers get it right on the nail, from R Kelly's contribution on the incendiary Threat to Rick Rubin's spot-on Beastie Boys/Run DMC incarnation of 99 Problems - the line "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one" - and Kayne West's Max-Romeo sampled gem, Lucifer.

Whether Jay-Z acts out the title of that song remains to be seen but with this send-off he's sure to leave a lot of fans hoping.

Label: Roc-A-Fella