My choice from this week’s reading to blog about was easy; it had to be over the Jay-Z chapter. Jay-Z has always been one of my favorite rappers (although the list of rappers I’m particularly familiar with is admittedly fairly short). While reading this selection I tried to pay particular attention to something we discussed last week in class. I was trying to keep in mind the fact that Toure is writing this article for popular magazines and is therefore writing them to be marketable rather than writing them to be particularly probing or critical.
In my opinion, the article succeeds greatly if we look at it for its enjoyment. So far I am loving this book as a whole, and I have actually suggested it to a number of my friends. This chapter was especially interesting to me as I enjoyed the transitions from describing the game of cards that Toure, Jay-Z, and his crew were playing to discussing Jay-Z’s history (the interview itself) to talking about his music. To me the most interesting parts were discussing the card game, because that is what really made me feel like I “knew” Jay-Z. Anyone can read about his history or listen to his music, but this told me something about Jay-Z the man rather than Jay-Z the rapper.
When I tried looking at this from a more critical viewpoint I couldn’t really find much. While in some of the earlier articles it seems likely that Toure didn’t ask some of the more probing questions that he could have (50 Cent) or didn’t talk about some of the more negative things that the rappers did while he was around (DMX) this article was mostly just talking about playing a card game with Jay-Z. I did particularly enjoy how Jay-Z always comes off as a calm and collected guy during the game, and that he is usually thought of as not being a wild hip-hopper like many are. But then when we go and look at some of his songs, or when Toure mentions that no one really teases Jay-Z because he is too harsh, or how after the last game he explodes in emotion we see that Jay-Z is just like the rest of us. He is not a cold and emotionless music robot, and he is also not a flamboyant attention hog like some rappers seem to be. To me Jay-Z is the most “real” rapper we’ve seen so far in the book.
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I found this article extremely interesting as well. It shows what a great MC Jay-Z is that he is able to come up with his rhymes off the top of his head, instead of writing them down and planning them like other artists. It's a testament to his work ethic and ability that he has moved from just rapping to producing other successful artists such as Kanye.
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