The Jay/Nas collaboration on Success is brimming with artistic ingenuity, if not commercial viability. The guest appearances are especially noteworthy. He slows it down to a lounge tempo on tracks such as I Know featuring Pharrell and Party Life. He hits especially hard on No Hook (Hustle' 'cane, hustle clothes or hustle music/ But hustle hard in any hustle that you pick) and Pray (Treat shame with shamelessness/ Aim stainlesses at _, You know the game this is/ Move coke like Pepsi, Don't matter what the brand name is). Which is most appropriate is up for debate. Akin to Kingdom Come, the beats of American Gangster show a maturity, a refinement that's not in the Black Album. The effect is slightly startling but not unwelcome. Pray and Roc Boys (And the Winner Is.) clearly demonstrate the trend. In fact, half the tracks wouldn't seem out of place on a Kanye West album. Gone are the hard-hitting beats of Dirt off Your Shoulder and Lucifer, replaced by an ensemble of horns and strings. American Gangster is clearly a compromise between the lyrics that the fans demand and the music that Jay appreciates. Make no mistake, musically this isn't Black Album 2. After all, American Gangster isn't about Jay-Z, or is it?
In one brilliant move Jay-Z neutralized his prior detractors and avoided accusations that he's drawing on a culture he's no longer a part of. Sort of a portal through which an artist can exist in an alternate reality. How can he reconcile being true to himself with giving the streets what they want? Create an entirely new genre: The hip-hop concept album. Their problem? Jay-Z has gone "soft," he's rapping about his wealth, his opulent lifestyle rather than spitting the obligatory lyrics about the dope game and the corner, muses that simply aren't part of his life anymore. Jay-Z puts out an album, Kingdom Come, that isn't well-received by his traditional constituents. He partied for a while, now he's back to the block.
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