gets multiple credits also - it's clear there's less on Jay's mind this time.

Jay is upstaged once or twice by his guests, and while the productions are stellar throughout - Timbaland appears three times, and No I.D. The Blueprint 3 isn't a one-man tour de force like the first. The king of the crossovers here is 'Empire State of Mind,' a New York flag-waver with plenty of landmark name-dropping that turns into a great anthem with help on the chorus from Alicia Keys. ' that it's not 'politically correct' to rail against one of the most reviled trends in pop music during the 2000s.) From there, he branches out with a calculating type of finesse, drawing in certain demographics via a roster of guests, from Young Jeezy (hardcore) to Drake (teens) to Kid Cudi (the backpacker crowd).

(Jay doesn't sound very convincing when he claims in 'D.O.A. There's plenty more lyrical violence to come, but most of the targets are much safer than they were eight years earlier. West also produced the second, 'Thank You,' and while it starts with typical Jay-Hova brio, the last verse piles on the unrelenting criticism of unnamed rappers doomed to weak sales. 'What We Talkin' About' begins the album with a wave of surging, oppressive synth, while Jay-Z enumerates (with an intriguing lack of detail) what he's said and what's been said about him, ending with a nod not to the past but the future (and Barack Obama). Kanye West is in the producer's chair for seven tracks, and it's clear he was reaching for the same energy level as the original Blueprint (which he produced). The Blueprint 3 is somewhere between the two, closer to the vitality and energy of the original but not without the crossover bids and guest features of the latter (albeit much better this time). The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse was a complete turn, a set of half-cocked crossovers, bloated to bursting with guest features that obscured his talents. The Blueprint of the first volume was Jay-Z as vital as he'd ever been, storming back to the hardcore after a few years of commercial success. When Jay-Z first made a series out of his best album, 2001's The Blueprint, it became a game of high expectations.

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