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后来在Barnes & Noble的Rock & Roll &个人专栏发表了关于Jay-Z的大文
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Brag-Like-That/ba-p/5743
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Brag-Like-That/ba-p/5743
Both co-kings flaunt their arrogance even by the standards of a genre
where braggadocio is the main event, and neither is shy about pretending
that the line of succession from Otis Redding and Martin Luther King is
paved with their gold. Jay-Z's brand p0rn is as hardc0re as West's,
although he prefers luxury durables to couture, and it's Jay-Z alone who
assumes Michael Jackson's mantle and then claims the Beatles' too. In
most respects, however, Jay-Z is a grown man and Kanye West is not. His
autobiographical tales are from the projects, not the mall. Never all
that big a pimp, he leaves the group sex and coke-snorting hotties to
the 34-year-old who says he's outgrown strip clubs. He even boasts that
he's happily married. And while both men are too damn paranoid about
their exalted station, Jay-Z exercises the caution of a crime boss while
West emanates the self-pity of a blabbermouth.
In 2005, with
Jay-Z feigning retirement and West acing his freshman-sophomore College
Dropout-Late Registration sequence, I'd never have figured it would work
out like this—that in 2011 Jay-Z would have his finger on the future
while West played the fame victim. By blabbering the revolting truth
about George W. Bush post-Katrina, West had even begun to manifest his
civil rights movement upbringing. But starting with his Iraq rhymes for
Panjabi MC and announced in full as of "Minority Report" on his 2006
maturity album Kingdom Come, Jay-Z also began to apply his intelligence
to politics and let down his guard enough to express softer emotions.
However dubious the dead homiez trope and the tribulations of the rich
and famous, both men had a claim on those emotions beyond what Jay-Z has
called "absent-father kharma": Jay-Z lost his beloved nephew when the
Chrysler his uncle had given the kid for graduation crashed with a
friend at the wheel, and West lost his even more beloved mother in a
grotesquely poetic accident in which the Chicago English professor died
at the hands of an L.A. plastic surgeon.
One could venture
that maybe Watch the Throne divvies up the way it does for rhetorical
purposes—that one king plays the hero and the other the hedonist, two
equally royal hip-hop archetypes. After all, My Beautiful Dark Twisted
Fantasy lays out West's personality disorders far more subtly and
satirically. More likely, however, collaborating with the undiminished
master who gave him his break just set West blabbering. Jay-Z is the
most irreligious of mainstream rappers, but he's been Jay-Hova since the
start of his rhyming career, restoring meanings to the word "awesome"
that many believed had been lost forever.
The only time I've seen
Jay-Z perform, at the Garden in late 1997, I took offense at his
tossed-off "Ladies grab my dick if you love hip-hop" and pegged him as
Little Milton to Busta Rhymes's Howlin' Wolf -- competent craftsman
versus untamed genius. But as is now well known, the truth was 170
degrees away. As he packs narrative and metaphor, jokes and puns and
homonyms, into lines sculpted with conversational microbeats and
taffy-pull vocalese and held together with internal rhymes, Jay-Z's
signal musical gift is to sound like he's got nothing to prove and
plenty to say—to sound like he's just talking. For an example, read
along with the third verse of the new urban anthem "Empire State of
Mind," right after "Big lights will inspire you." Or do without
Timbaland's mocking beat and sound out the opening words of Blueprint
3's lesser-known "Reminder": "All rhymers with Alzheimer's line up
please /All mamis with mind-freeze please line up please /All bloggers
with comments, please, I come in peace /Let's see if we can kill your
amnesia by the time I leave /All mamis I whored before'll vouch for me
/Tell 'em 'bout the time on your momma's couch mami." I mean, if you
gotta brag, brag like that.
where braggadocio is the main event, and neither is shy about pretending
that the line of succession from Otis Redding and Martin Luther King is
paved with their gold. Jay-Z's brand p0rn is as hardc0re as West's,
although he prefers luxury durables to couture, and it's Jay-Z alone who
assumes Michael Jackson's mantle and then claims the Beatles' too. In
most respects, however, Jay-Z is a grown man and Kanye West is not. His
autobiographical tales are from the projects, not the mall. Never all
that big a pimp, he leaves the group sex and coke-snorting hotties to
the 34-year-old who says he's outgrown strip clubs. He even boasts that
he's happily married. And while both men are too damn paranoid about
their exalted station, Jay-Z exercises the caution of a crime boss while
West emanates the self-pity of a blabbermouth.
In 2005, with
Jay-Z feigning retirement and West acing his freshman-sophomore College
Dropout-Late Registration sequence, I'd never have figured it would work
out like this—that in 2011 Jay-Z would have his finger on the future
while West played the fame victim. By blabbering the revolting truth
about George W. Bush post-Katrina, West had even begun to manifest his
civil rights movement upbringing. But starting with his Iraq rhymes for
Panjabi MC and announced in full as of "Minority Report" on his 2006
maturity album Kingdom Come, Jay-Z also began to apply his intelligence
to politics and let down his guard enough to express softer emotions.
However dubious the dead homiez trope and the tribulations of the rich
and famous, both men had a claim on those emotions beyond what Jay-Z has
called "absent-father kharma": Jay-Z lost his beloved nephew when the
Chrysler his uncle had given the kid for graduation crashed with a
friend at the wheel, and West lost his even more beloved mother in a
grotesquely poetic accident in which the Chicago English professor died
at the hands of an L.A. plastic surgeon.
One could venture
that maybe Watch the Throne divvies up the way it does for rhetorical
purposes—that one king plays the hero and the other the hedonist, two
equally royal hip-hop archetypes. After all, My Beautiful Dark Twisted
Fantasy lays out West's personality disorders far more subtly and
satirically. More likely, however, collaborating with the undiminished
master who gave him his break just set West blabbering. Jay-Z is the
most irreligious of mainstream rappers, but he's been Jay-Hova since the
start of his rhyming career, restoring meanings to the word "awesome"
that many believed had been lost forever.
The only time I've seen
Jay-Z perform, at the Garden in late 1997, I took offense at his
tossed-off "Ladies grab my dick if you love hip-hop" and pegged him as
Little Milton to Busta Rhymes's Howlin' Wolf -- competent craftsman
versus untamed genius. But as is now well known, the truth was 170
degrees away. As he packs narrative and metaphor, jokes and puns and
homonyms, into lines sculpted with conversational microbeats and
taffy-pull vocalese and held together with internal rhymes, Jay-Z's
signal musical gift is to sound like he's got nothing to prove and
plenty to say—to sound like he's just talking. For an example, read
along with the third verse of the new urban anthem "Empire State of
Mind," right after "Big lights will inspire you." Or do without
Timbaland's mocking beat and sound out the opening words of Blueprint
3's lesser-known "Reminder": "All rhymers with Alzheimer's line up
please /All mamis with mind-freeze please line up please /All bloggers
with comments, please, I come in peace /Let's see if we can kill your
amnesia by the time I leave /All mamis I whored before'll vouch for me
/Tell 'em 'bout the time on your momma's couch mami." I mean, if you
gotta brag, brag like that.
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