It’s been four years since Jay-Z released a full body of work. He hopped out the Window and released “Magna Carta Holy Grail”, an ok album but mediocre for an artist the likes of Jay-Z. Some of the beats were mediocre, songs were too abstract and you could tell he was trying to evolve his sound too much. Ever since then, we only heard him on a couple of singles, as he turned into a full-time business man. He bought and relaunched the streaming service Tidal in 2015 and started producing media projects such as The Kalief Browder Story that was shown on Spike TV earlier this year. We knew that Jay was gonna be coming back with a new album soon though, and he didn’t disappoint us.

4:44 sonically sounds like what he was trying to go for with MCHG. The vibe to me was different from what I heard from other Jay-Z albums. The album was exclusively produced by No I.D., who displayed his genius in every song that was heard on the album. His production skill definitely shined through on “The Story of OJ”, as No I.D. flipped Four Women by Nina Simone. The samples were seamless and you’d have to really listen to hear the new sample as the album rolled on. I was shaky when I heard No I.D. was the only producer on the project but he made a believer out of me for sure!

Of course, Jay-Z treated the album like a press release. He threw some shots back at Kanye for his long rants during his tour where he kept proclaiming that Jay had hitmen and coming for his head, directly referencing a line that Kanye rapped in 30 Hours on The Life of Pablo. He also managed to get some slight jabs in on Eric Benet for his failed relationship with Hallie Berry, Al Sharpton for taking selfies in the mirror and Bill Cosby’s situation.  He also addressed his side of the story on the fight for Prince’s catalogue after he died and how Prince believed in Jay-Z and what he was trying to do with Tidal. But, of course, the runaway topic of the day is about him admitting that “becky with the good hair” from Beyonce’s Lemonade is a real person. Yup, Jay-Z admitted that he cheated on Beyonce and the world is at a standstill. That’s something that I’m going to address later though.

All and all, I give this album a 8.5/10. I don’t understand why people are saying they didn’t like it. Sure, it was short and Jay started going off beat a lot but this project was cohesive. You wanted social commentary and less mumble rap and Jay-Z gave it to you. You can clearly see progression in Jay’s music catalogue, even if he does give the occasional story about how he was a drug dealer. Nevertheless, listening to this album made me hungry for more from Jay-Z. Hopefully this isn’t his retirement album!