Even as he ascended to the executive suite-a move that not only re-christened rappers as the vertically integrated businessmen they already were, but also opened up new paths for black artists navigating corporate America-he remained stoic, a little ruthless, playful about a past that most might not have come back from.Īdd to it a dexterity on the mic-not to mention a deep, intuitive love for language-that helped bring rap out of the yes-yes-y’all era and into another in which MCs functioned as American griots, chroniclers of the black American experience whose chains flashed bright but whose words flashed even brighter. Jay-Z (born in 1969) didn’t romanticize the streets (“Recruited lieutenants with ludicrous dreams of gettin’ cream/‘Let’s do this,’ it gets tedious”), but he never claimed remorse for them either. By the time he released 1996’s Reasonable Doubt, he said he was the oldest 26-year-old you’d ever want to meet.
His childhood was violent: He started selling crack in his early teens and later quipped that getting a gun in Bed-Stuy was easier than getting public assistance. On a smaller, personal scale, this song reminds me of the late DJ Mehdi, who was never better than when playing these 'full on', block-party oriented hip-hop and funk sets, with a huge smile, booty-shake and hand-clapping, and would never fail in including "Empire State Of Mind" (in the last 2 years that is).Growing up in central Brooklyn (“I’m from Marcy Houses, where the boys die by the thousand”), Shawn Carter wrote rhymes everywhere: standing at a streetlight, on the backs of brown-paper bags, banging out beats on his windowsill to find the rhythm. And who cares the songs sounds like the very definition of OTT, who cares Jay-Z sounds like a pacha barely catching his own flow because as with all good (hip-) pop songs, magic is still here.
And yes sometimes you wish you were Jay-Z and Alicia Keys leaving the studio that day and going like "well I guess we did a bit of a blast today". This song, an instant classic rivalling Sinatra's "New York, New York" as a triumphant soundtrack for one of the world's most imperial cities of its times, is "Empire State Of Mind", and will be played on radios and at weddings for the generations to come.
A song that would have any listener actually feel like he's a mdma-fuelled SUV driven diamonded-hoes-surrounded self-satisfied self-centered overpowered superstar billionaire cruising the streets of New-York (symbol here!) with the city at his feet, yet totally in love with it (a non new-yorker couldn't have made this song). Learn Empire State Of Mind music notes in minutes.
It was all about showing-off, and developping even further musically an inner feeling of supremacy, overpower, omniscience, both to conjure inexorable decline, and show the demanding masses you were part of the few, dominant, superrich chosen ones. 'Popaganda', somehow.Īrtistically it was most of the time dreadful and fast sleep-indulging, but then, among a very few others (including certain Timbaland x Nelly Furtado songs imo) came a song which was the epitome of that 00s myth, yet transcending it to actually sound like the real thing, its credible official soundtrack. Jay-Z has won 23 Grammy Awards in his career, including Best Urban Contemporary Album for Everything Is Love in 2018 and four Best Rap Song wins, including for Empire State of Mind and. Download Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys Empire State Of Mind sheet music notes and printable PDF score arranged for Piano, Vocal & Guitar. With a context of war, back-to-basics and economic recession, the years 00 were paradoxically in US and occidental mainstream pop the climax of celebrating blingish supersuccess, 'winner attitude', simplified/childish 'cool' (or rather : signs of it), and somehow dissing nuance, subtlety, humor and culture as excuses for the weak and loser.