Belong to the City: On Jay-Z, New York, and 9/11

A retrospective Jay-Z assessment from a 9/11 child

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I rode the bus to school. Upon my return home that afternoon I planned to beg for a ride to Circuit City in order to purchase two additions, both released that day, to my small but growing collection of rap CDs: Ghetto Fabolous, the debut from the baby-faced Brooklynite Fabolous which had already claimed its share of airspace on tri-state urban radio, and The Blueprint, the sixth effort from his Kings County elder Jay-Z.

The school year was young enough that my classmates and I were still adjusting to new teachers and schedules, as well as the middle school campus we now occupied as sixth graders. In our district, sixth grade was the first year students changed classrooms according to subject, and my middle school was an open-air architectural mishap of the 1970s vintage. Most classrooms were divided by waist-high shelves rather than actual walls, so that one could tune in and out of three or four adjacent lectures at a time like a transistor radio dial. English class inevitably became jumbled with pre-algebra and earth science, and if one teacher’s constituency erupted in momentary laughter the neighboring assemblies swiveled to attention. Some landlocked classrooms, like the haunted game room in Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, were accessible only by traipsing through haphazard aisles arranged in two or three others, and only a handful had windows. Practically the only natural light was filtered through copious skylights affixed above the most well-trafficked hallways. Impossible to reach for cleaning and maintenance, they had become cracked and yellowed with age so that even the brightest mornings were condemned to a cumulonimbus pallor. To make matters worse, the school was built into the side of a hill, so runoff from higher ground made the ceilings leak whenever it rained or snowed. From the outside, the building looked like a giant submarine shipwrecked and forgotten in a deciduous southern New England copse.

By late morning, my plans for the afternoon had been foiled by a series of plane crashes ninety miles to the southwest, and I spent the remainder of the school day huddled at a desk in the back of my science classroom, conjecturing about the end of the world with my friends as the teachers and administrators debated whether to evacuate and how much to tell us. Through it all the PA system blared incessantly, summoning dozens of students at a time whose valiant parents had flooded the early pickup line to save their children from the apocalypse.

My initiation to rap music came via the venerable Hot 97, the New York FM station which could be enjoyed from our side of the Long Island Sound on a clear day. While its playlist reflected the diverse face of turn-of-the-century hip hop, rotating singles from OutKast’s Stankonia, Nelly’s Country Grammar, Dr. Dre’s 2001, and Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP at hourly intervals, it was still largely a New York-centric enterprise, ruled by DMX, Ja Rule, P. Diddy, and their respective henchmen. That spring, my friends and I were thrilled when WZMX-Hartford rebranded as Hot 93.7, ensuring that our hip hip-and-R&B appetites need not be limited by inclement weather or a short antenna.

That fall Jay-Z and Nas were embroiled in a bitter airwaves war for New York City’s rap throne vacated upon the Notorious B.I.G.’s 1997 murder. While listeners waited with bated breath for the next diss track between the Queensbridge wunderkind and the Bed-Stuy chart-topper, they did so cautiously, the fatal coast wars of the mid-‘90s which claimed the lives of 2Pac and B.I.G. looming in too-recent memory.

While I loved Jay, who referred to himself variously as “Jigga” and “Hov” (short for “Jay-Hovah”), as much as the next eleven-year-old, I was firmly a Nas guy. Jay-Z was considered more of a singles artist than a curator of focused, consistent albums. He wore an impassive sneer on his face like an Easter Island head and looked ridiculous wearing throwback jerseys and paneled ballcaps. He seemed like the kind of kid who’d stand still and silent in the corner during a basketball game, only to spaz out with wild, out-of-control dribbling on the rare occasion the ball was passed his way.

At the time he was flanked by a coterie of rappers signed to his Roc-A-Fella Records loosely known as the State Property collective. There was the hapless Memphis Bleek, a childhood friend who contrary to all evidence Jay repeatedly promised was “one hit away”; the Jewish-in-name-only Beanie Sigel, a scowling, mush-mouthed grumbler who rapped about selling drugs and went to jail a lot; and my favorite, Freeway, a bearded Muslim from Philadelphia whose raps often didn’t even rhyme but were buoyed by his shrill effervescence. Soon he’d add the Young Gunz, a teenage duo marketed as stick-up kids with hearts of gold, and a shy producer from Chicago with unlikely rap aspirations named Kanye West.

On the Blueprint song “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love),” Jay-Z closed his second verse:

I told you in ninety-six that I came to take this shit and I did
Handle my biz, I scramble like Randall with his
Cunningham, but the only thing runnin’ is numbers, fam
Jigga held you down six summers, damn!

At the time, I took it for granted — I could hardly recall a summer Jay-Z hadn’t held down, and each year like clockwork he unveiled a new album that immediately became canonical. Growing up my father and his friends had Avengers comics and the Reed-and-Frazier battery; my friends and I had State Property CDs and the Sprewell assault-and-battery.

Jay-Z debuted in 1996 with Reasonable Doubt, a masterpiece of the mafioso rap subgenre that seemed less embellished than the aural screenplays of Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and Kool G Rap. It’s a manual to the complicated street politics of Giuliani-era hustlers and drug runners, populated by outer-borough black and Hispanic kingpins looking to supplant emeritus Italians as Jay-Z and his cohorts struggle to find a place somewhere in the shifting landscape. In retrospect, it’s flawed only by a poorly-placed radio single and guest appearances from less accomplished collaborators.

At age 26, he had an unmemorable voice but remarkable technique, exhibiting flawless breath control and showcasing intricately complex rhyme schemes made all the more impressive by how effortless they sounded. Among Reasonable Doubt’s fourteen tracks are some of his most timeless songs: the opening manifesto “Can’t Knock the Hustle”; “Brooklyn’s Finest,” an energetic Notorious B.I.G. duet; and the intense “Can I Live,” a brilliantly-produced track arranged by future Murder Inc. label head Irv Gotti.

Unlike many of his peers, he sought to place the street violence he witnessed within a greater context. On the early highlight “Dead Presidents II,” he recalls an emergency room scene:

Hospital dazed, reflectin’ when my man laid up
On the uptown high block, he got his side sprayed up
I saw his life slippin’, this is a minor setback
Yo, still in all, we livin’, just dream about the get back
That made him smile, though his eyes said, ‘Pray for me’
I’ll do you one better and slay these niggas faithfully

Even early on he was a master of truisms. “I’m out for dead presidents to represent me,” he declared on “Dead Presidents II,” borrowing from Nas a euphemism for U.S. currency. Of his conception he proclaimed, “My pops knew exactly what he did when he made me: tried to get a nut and he got a nut.” “This is the number one rule for your set,” he declaimed on the chorus of the album closer “Regrets,” “In order to survive, you gotta learn to live with regrets.”

Reasonable Doubt is dramatic but not overly sentimental, serious but not always somber. If not his best album, it’s the most important. With its piano-based production, hooks constructed upon vocal samples from Mobb Deep and Fat Joe, and interludes derived from mob movie bites, no rap album has ever sounded more like New York City.

Jay-Z proceeded with a series of underwhelming records during the latter half of the 1990s. These were awkward years for Hov just as they were for rap at large, with Will Smith and Puff Daddy ushering in an era of multiplatinum crossovers. Jay-Z fell in step, releasing a slew of R&B-tinged singles and lethargic collaborations interspersed with enough big hits and sprinkles of his debut’s brilliance to expand his audience: 1998’s Vol. 2…Hard Knock Life sold over five million copies. The four albums he released between 1997 and 2000 are constructed upon obvious interpolations of ‘80s hits and flat meditations on fame: songs with titles as telling as “Money, Cash, Hoes,” “Money Ain’t a Thing,” and “Rap Game/Crack Game.” If below his standard, they comprised a necessary transitional period that enabled him to navigate uncertain waters en route to 2001’s The Blueprint. Countless New York rappers debuted to great fanfare in the mid-‘90s but never evolved enough to sustain a career.

When the eagerly anticipated Blueprint arrived on 9/11, New York City had reclaimed dominance of the national rap discourse. DMX’s Ruff Ryders, Ja Rule’s Murder Inc., P. Diddy’s Bad Boy Records, and Jay’s own Roc-A-Fella Records had established deep rosters of hit-churning rap acts, and Jay-Z’s high-profile feuds with Nas and Mobb Deep made The Blueprint a landmark event for New York hip hop. With a spare fifteen tracks largely built upon distant ‘70s soul samples and minimal guest appearances, it’s easily his most focused record.

The Blueprint does many things and all of them well. “The Ruler’s Back” and “The Takeover” are vehemently combative tracks placing would-be competitors from across the five boroughs within their crosshairs:

What could you do to me? It’s not new to me
Sue me? Fuck you, what’s a couple dollars to me?
But you will respect me, simple as that
Or I got no problem goin’ back
I’m representin’ for the seat where Rosa Parks sat
Where Malcolm X was shot, where Martin Luther was popped
So off we go, let the trumpets blow
And hold on, because the driver of the mission is a pro

The singles — “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and “Jigga That Nigga,” — are the most exuberant of his career. It’s got a fantastic love song, “Song Cry,” and is littered with slick two-bar maxims: “Nigga respect the game, that should be it / What you eat don’t make me shit” on “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love)”; “Pay us like you owe us for all the years that you hoed us / We can talk, but money talks, so talk more bucks” on “Izzo (H.O.V.A).”

Although he pledges “I’ll never change, I’m too stuck in my ways” on the deep highlight “Never Change,” maturation makes The Blueprint Jay-Z’s magnum opus. It’s self-congratulatory, confrontational, and humorous, the diary of a brilliant recluse approaching middle age in a fractured New York City rap landscape. Despite and because of its threats, challenges, and assertions of infallibility, it’s Jay-Z at his most vulnerable. It’s the only album where he seems more man than monolith.

The Blueprint and the last great Jay-Z album, 2003’s The Black Album, were separated by 2002’s The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse, a two-disc set of radio fodder released at the height of his influence, and the first of two diverting but largely discounted full-length collaborations with R. Kelly. When The Black Album arrived, it was accompanied by one of rap’s greatest marketing gimmicks: it was to be the final Jay-Z album. Like Michael Jordan in 1993, Jay-Z would retire in his prime.

Like the first two of Jordan’s three retirements, Jay-Z’s was ultimately a farce, but the magnificent Black Album could not have existed without it; it’s American pop music’s most majestic pat on the back. 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G.’s deaths afforded their careers closure — their melodramatic final albums were the prophetic final statements of geniuses cut down at their peaks, and they never experienced decline. The Black Album did, or rather would have, accomplished the same. It’s the existential declaration of a genius wondering how he’s going to spend the rest of his life.

Helmed by Kanye West and the Neptunes at their respective musical peaks, The Black Album features some of Jay-Z’s best writing. True to the album’s mission, there are frequent looks backward, as on “December 4th”:

They say they never really miss you ‘til you dead or you gone
So on that note, I’m leaving after this song
So you ain’t gotta feel no way about Jay so long
At least let me tell you why I’m this way, hold on
I was conceived by Gloria Carter and Adnes Reeves
Who made love under the sycamore tree, which makes me
A more sicker MC, and my momma would claim
At ten pounds, when I was born I didn’t give her no pain
Although through the years I gave her her fair share
I gave her her first real scare, I made up for birth when I got here

There are elegant, club-ready singles (“Change Clothes” and “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”), emphatic final declarations (“Encore” and “My 1st Song”), and an ‘80s rap-rock throwback produced by hip hop royalty Rick Rubin (“99 Problems”). Even the short axioms here are weighted: “If you can’t respect that your whole perspective is wack / Maybe you’ll love me when I fade to black.”

Somehow the retirement made sense. Having completed the hero’s journey, the title of The Black Album’s third track captured his conundrum perfectly: “What More Can I Say?” The congratulatory air wasn’t meant only for its creator, but for the listener as well.

On the chorus of 1996’s “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” the first track from Reasonable Doubt, Mary J. Blige intones:

I’m taking out this time
To give you a piece of my mind
Who do you think you are?
Oh baby, one day you’ll be a star
But until then lately, I’m the one who’s crazy?
‘Cause that’s the way you’re making me feel
I’m just trying to get mine, I don’t have the time
To knock the hustle for real

Jay never stopped giving us pieces of his mind, but upon his return to recording in 2006 the pieces grew far less interesting as his eyes only reflected what was directly in front of them. The death knell for many rappers is when they lose touch with the streets which supplied their source material; Nas, Mobb Deep, and Kool G Rap each floundered once they could no longer go to the corner to find subjects ripe for their attention. But Jay-Z was better as a poet and a memoirist than as a metro reporter — save for periodic bouts of nostalgia, he rarely rapped about selling drugs or carrying firearms beyond his thirtieth birthday.

Even at his best Jay-Z was never unimpeachable. It bothered me that a 1997 single called “The City Is Mine” cribbed its chorus from Glenn Frey’s “You Belong to the City.” (Who belongs to who, Jigga?) The otherwise glorious “Song Cry” begins with the clunker “Good dude, you know you love me like cooked food.” (Like cooked food?) Had memes existed during his heyday I fear his less-considered writing and emotionless visage would have made him a walking target. But his entire post-retirement oeuvre, now a decade deep, is a long, arcing victory lap. Having already acknowledged he had nothing left to say or prove, Jay-Z quickly realized that his significance was a function of his being a rapper. His post-2006 output could just as easily have been made by any of a legion of younger rappers whose entire existence hinges on trying to emulate his early-2000s work. Perhaps this was inevitable — no pop musicians are truly great or relevant for twenty years at a time. It would likely have happened to 2Pac and B.I.G. had they lived to see middle age.

Exacerbating his problem was what he did with his inestimable celebrity. He married the world’s biggest pop star, became part-owner of an NBA team, and for some reason was named president of Def Jam. He wore sportcoats and dropped his hyphen, becoming Jay Z. Despite his foretelling quip “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man” on a 2005 Kanye West track, his track record was suspect. His Def Jam presidency ended quickly and unceremoniously while Roc-A-Fella Records spiraled into defunctness and his clothing line, Rocawear, all but disappeared. His worst album to date, 2013’s Magna Carta Holy Grail, was lambasted not only for its lack of appeal, but for its inescapable rollout packaged with a cell phone promotion. Perhaps his biggest misstep came in 2015 upon the announcement of his music-streaming service Tidal, couched in messaging that it would be the much-needed platform to finally pay royalties to rich pop stars.

I don’t fault Jay-Z for being a bad executive — if a person becomes famous for being great at something, chances are he won’t be as good at whatever it is he decides to do next. What’s heartbreaking is to behold how utterly tone-deaf a onetime curator of cool became. His insipid post-2006 discography seems to exist only to fuel an equally crappy business career in some perverted, parasitic give-and-take. Initially his raps spoke for New York City, then for hip hop at large; by the time of his 2003 retirement he had become so universal that his narratives could only speak either for the entire world or for himself. After 2006 his icon was so great that the two were indistinguishable.

When Springsteen, Petty, Mellencamp, and Bon Jovi hit forty they became, if anything, even more introspective; the problem was their accounts of being middle-aged, divorced, and rich were interchangeable whereas their stories of the young, wild, and free were anything but. A common defense of old Jay is that he’s the first rapper to be this old and this important. I’m not sure that’s true, and if it is it’s irrelevant — there’s no reason an artist can’t be honest and observant into middle age. Nas’s 2012 album Life Is Good wasn’t great, but it was nothing if not honest. If Jay’s embarrassing “Suit & Tie” verse wasn’t a single-handed legacy debaser, even 2007's album-in-a-movie-in-an-album American Gangster was a cynical excuse to reheat Reasonable Doubt tropes. Packaging tossed-off material as an impetus to go touring is one thing, but doing it to shell smartphones and monthly subscriptions is a far more grievous offense.

Of course I didn’t know any of this as I sat in Mrs. Johnson’s science class on September 11, 2001, waiting for passenger jets to fall out of the sky upon Connecticut. But if I could go back and talk to that eleven-year-old and the millions of boys just like me, I’d assure them that, just as he’d promised, Jigga would hold us down that fall, winter, spring, and summer, and pretty much every one thereafter.