Jay-Z's Blueprint 3

As his eleventh studio album, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 illustrates the rappers continuous appeal to mainstream audiences and rap enthusiasts alike. Unlike Jay-Z's prior discography, which has consistently provided listeners with a hip-hop outlet for lyrical substance and intelligent sub context, The Blueprint 3 not only fails in providing listeners with either of these attributes, but compromises Jay-Z’s hard earned rap-revolutionary image.

The Blueprint 3 plays like a Lil Wayne album, with more tracks existing as tailor-made singles than components of a cohesive LP. Tracks which have garnered wide attention from top forty stations such as "Empire State of Mind" transform Jay-Z's lyrically strong persona into a commercial hit-maker, a mercenary more concerned with airplay than his original appeal as a true hip-hop artist devoid of the desire for super stardom (only garnering it as a latent function of his original body of work). While tracks such as "Death of Autotune" contain subject matter denouncing commercial trends, the subject matter is only skin deep, with forced lyrics and a pop inspired beat bundled in "hip-hop revolution" labeled packaging.

Jay-Z's latest release is entertaining, and it manages to maintain its audience's attention throughout the album, but it fails to communicate Jay-Z's intended image as a hip-hop mogul and revolutionary.

Zero 7 Album Review - Yeah Ghost

As the fourth studio album from the trip-hop musical duo Zero 7, Yeah Ghost begins to showcase the duos chameleon like abilities in producing music that spans various genres and incorporates significantly different musical approaches from track to track. Unlike the duos popular debut studio album (Simple Things) which garnered substantial attention from mainstream audiences seeking an indie outlet without the hassle of searching far beyond the Garden State motion picture soundtrack, Yeah Ghost invites listeners to travel further down the rabbit hole into a popery of traditional Zero 7 elements intertwined with extremes on both the far end of the indie spectrum and commercial spectrum alike.

Yeah Ghost plays like a futuristic trial in assessing ones tastes and distastes in musical appeal. As such, it is unlikely that anyone but die hard Zero 7 fans will find themselves enjoying more than two tracks back to back when listening to the album in sequence. The variety in musical approach is presented immediately with the opening tracks. From “Count Me Out,” which is sounds more like Zero 7’s spin on an orchestra tuning than a cohesive song, to “Mr. McGee,” a commercial pop track with neo-soul vocal elements similar to that of Gnarls Barkley, it is apparent from the very beginning that the dynamic duo will keep you guessing from track to track throughout the entirety of Yeah Ghost. Original elements of the Zero 7 we first became acquainted with in the golden years of Simple Things and When it Falls can still be found in the energetic yet tasteful “Pop Art Blue,” while a culmination of original Zero 7 elements alongside edgy commercial elements can be found in “Everything Up (Zizou).”

While Yeah Ghost is more similar in style to the edgier and less traditional Zero 7 studio album it immediately follows (The Garden), it retains apparent yet subtle artifacts of the original Zero 7 albums that first gained our attention and excitement. Yeah Ghost is different, and although most tracks get better with each play, Yeah Ghost is more of an acquired taste that begs the attention of Zero 7 fans who were originally lured in by a musical group that sounded far different than they do today.