Roc-A-Fella co-founder Dame Dash was working on a soundtrack to a new comedy called Sprung when he asked producer David “Ski Beatz” Willis for original material. While inner turmoil about the hustler’s life has been a hallmark of hip-hop since the days of Ice-T, Jay’s use of language elevates songs like “Politics As Usual,” and justifies Barry Michael Cooper’s assessment of him as “the Proust of the projects.” Produced by Ski Beatz, who flips a Stylistics sample and lends the track a smooth, melancholy tone, “Politics As Usual” epitomizes this quandary: Jay rhymes how he’s “cursing the very God that brought this grief to be,” but then shifts and says, “I’m trying to feel mink, nigga.” “I remember even the reviews, when it first came out, ‘This is gangsta, hustler persona.’ I knew they didn’t understand what was being said in the music,” he told the BBC for its 2008 documentary series Classic Albums. The two conflicting emotions can be difficult to parse, which may have led some early critics to dismiss it as an above-average gangsta rap record upon its initial release.

Reasonable Doubt is suffused with a mixture of regret and pride at Jay-Z’s street exploits. Jay-Z and Linkin Park, “Numb/Encore” (2004).Up until then our records sold 5,000-10,000 copies American Gangster sold a million copies.

“Then being credited as a songwriter on a Jay-Z song does a lot for the songwriters. “A record being sampled is like a needle in the haystack, and the chances of it being a hit song is even slimmer, so it was a real fortunate thing that happened to us,” the group’s guitarist and leader Thomas Brenneck told Life and Times.

Diddy and the Hitmen – and Jay-Z raps about amassing vast wealth: “Let ya hair down baby, I just hit a score/Pick any place on the planet, pick a shore/Take what the Forbes figure, then figure more.” One group that got to share the wealth was the Brooklyn soul outfit the Menahan Street Band, who were sampled for the track. “Roc Boys (And the Winner Is…)” reaches back to the dazzling, horn-blasting sound of iconic Jay-Z hits like “U Don’t Know.” Gleaming brass lines ricochet around the track – produced by P.

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