A Review of Jay-Z's The Dynasty: Roc La Familia

A year after Vol.3 ...Life Times of S. Carter, Jay-Z is back, and this time he's brought some friends for his most focused album since his debut. Meant to showcase Roc-A-Fella signees Amil, Memphis Bleek, and Beanie Siegel, the album's artistic and commercial ambitions are largely identical and tightly contained, unlike the sprawling Vol.3, or Vol. 2, Hard Knock Life. Of course, this means that the strength of the album largely rests on their shoulders-we already know what Jay-Z is capable of. It's a clever marketing gimmick in that it not only provides exposure to his artists, but it also accentuates Jay-Z's talents in contrast to his compatriots.

Beginning with perhaps his most introspective verse in two years:

"The theme song to The Sopranos
plays in the key of life on my, mental piano
Got a strange way of seein life like
I'm Stevie Wonder with, beads under the doo-rag
Intuition is there even when my vision's impaired, yeah..."

Jay-Z coasts into the alpha male brag fest Change the Game with Memphis Bleek and Beanie Sigel. Each emcee tries to out-boast and out-threaten the others, and they each do it well enough, which is good because the album is full of similar tracks (Stick 2 the Script, You, Me, Him, Her, The R.O.C., Squeeze 1^st, Holla, etc.). There is plenty of gangster posturing; even the album cover's artwork features a menacing Jay-Z in a black shirt and black bandana. This seems to fall in-line more with the trends of the time rather than a natural aggressiveness on Jay-Z's part. When this album was released, the Ruff Ryders and Hot Boys were each topping the charts with odes to violence and hedonism, and Dr. Dre had released the extremely successful and over-the-top-gangster 2001 just a year earlier.

But there are some surprisingly personal moments that separate this from a typical rap release, such as Jay-Z's acerbically candid Guilty Until Proven Innocent; the Jay-Z-Beanie Siegel-Scarface confessional This Can't Be Life; the doleful ode to failed opposite-sex relationships Soon You'll Understand; and the haunting closer Jay-Z and Beanie Siegel duet about deadbeat fathers Where Have You Been.

The album is designated to highlight the strength of Jay-Z's team, so it is fitting too that they display they can match Jay-Z's ability to captivate emotionally. Beanie Sigel, gruff enough to fit comfortably amidst the DMXs and the Juveniles of the time, proves himself a multidimensional rapper to those who had not heard his debut album released a year earlier, with his candid raps about the conflict between his lifestyle and his religious beliefs, and his painful childhood. He also shines on the paranoid (and thankfully uncensored) Streets is Talking, a caustic companion piece to In My Lifetime, Vol. 1's excellent Streets is Watching. Unfortunately, Memphis Bleek, who shares nearly as much airtime (including a disappointing solo track that should have gone to Siegel), sticks to the same oneupsmanship on song after song, and wears thin quite quickly.

The album's non-Roc guests are mercifully limited to Scarface, Snoop, Lil Mo, and R. Kelly, as more would have been overwhelming. Scarface steals This Can't Be Life with a heartfelt verse, and Snoop delivers an appropriately lewd verse on Get Your Mind Right Mami. Beyond Bleek and Sigel, Amil's one solo verse on You, Me, Him, Her is evidence against her abilities as a rapper. And rather than an abundance of Bleek, the album might have been better served by more airplay for Freeway, the newest Roc-A-Fella signee. He appears only once on the shrewd 1-900 Hustler with a unique rhyme cadence and sing-song flow that gleams. The aforementioned is the album's concept record in which Sigel, Bleek, Jay-Z and Freeway answer questions from petty criminals about how to be more successful in their illicit endeavors.

The album is surprising sonically cohesive, as production is mainly split between synthesizer heavy producers Rick Rock and Rockwilder, and soul-samplers Kanye West, Bink, and Just Blaze. And thematically, the album does what it's meant to do: give you Bleek and Sigel under the pretense of giving you Jay-Z. Jay-Z here is as aggressive as he is on his last two albums, but more focused, which yields enough Jay-Z highlights here to justify buying the album.

Of course, with every Jay-Z album, you're supposed to live vicariously through him. If you don't buy into that, this and his previous two albums are likely deeply unsatisfying. But with the exception of a couple of mediocre tracks and an irritating Bleek saying the same thing on too many tracks, it's hard not to get caught up in either the heady success that is Roc-A-Fella Records, or the rapper's personal travails.

Buy Jay-Z's The Dynasty: Roc La Familia here

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