By: David Williams
Score 8.6/10
Today Jay-Z’s album Reasonable Doubt has reached legendary icon status. He rapped with the composure of a seasoned veteran and the confidence of a drug kingpin. He was only supposed to make one record and be done, off to be the businessman calling him from the inside, but with the success of his debut came the opportunity of a Def Jam record deal, an opportunity too great for the hustler to pass up. Rap Music was like a sport to the man Shawn Carter. You could tell just how much he wanted the responsibility of being the guy, like how Jordan always lusted for the ball in his hands in the final seconds. His competitiveness drove his desire to be the best the following year with the making of In My Lifetime Vol. 1.
In 1997 hip-hop was in a transitional period. Biggie Smalls, who was known as the best rapper at that time, was murdered in Los Angeles on March 9th, just 16 days before the release of his sophomore album, Life After Death. The year prior, Tupac was shot and killed in Las Vegas, so in the last year, rap lost its two leaders within the genre. There was a void missing with the departure of the two legends. You got a sense of guys bewildered, looking around at each other, saying, “where do we go from here.”
Most would have assumed the rise to prominence would be for Nas to step up, already having one of the greatest albums ever recorded under his belt with Illmatic. But Nas didn’t possess the demeanor for that type of leadership; he is a lead-by-example leader. In interviews, he appeared quiet, soft-spoken, and introverted. His personality was akin to that of a modern-day Kawai Leonard. On the west coast side, Snoop Dogg was in a war with his own record label, Death Row. Combined with the loss of his friend Tupac, he was preoccupied with other issues than worrying about being rap’s leader. This leads us to Jay-Z raising his hand like a kid in class, stepping up to answer the teacher’s question after peering at the other students waiting for someone else to speak up. No rapper wanted the title, so he tried to take it.
Photo Courtesy of Armen Djerrahian
In the first verse of “The City Is Mine,” Jay asks his recently deceased friend and former high school classmate, Biggie, to relinquish the crown of New York: “You held it down long enough, let me take those reigns.” Within the tragic circumstances, Jay asserts his readiness to progress past being Robin to Biggie’s Batman in the most respectful way possible. This song was the first step in shedding that title and also the spark plug to beef with his primary competition Nas in the years that followed.
As a matter of fact, he kept his rivals close by and forced himself into the conversation on the grimy origin story, “Where I’m From,” rhyming how people argue every day about who’s the best MC Biggie, Jay-Z, or Nas. The verses are hard-hitting street tales about growing up in the Projects in Brooklyn, sneering, “Cough up a lung, where I’m from, Marcy, son, ain’t nothing nice.” He’s able to paint a vivid picture of the dangers and sheer sadness of life growing up through immeasurable odds of drugs, gun violence, and arrests. Jay has a hunter’s mentality like the Predator in the South American jungle, and there was no bigger game in town than Nas. He wanted his spot in hip-hop, so it felt antagonizing to sample his voice again on “Rap Game/Crack Game.” The title is self-explanatory, as he brilliantly lists the parallels between the celebrated music industry and the illegal drug dealing trade.
The middle part of the album shows just how elite Jay is as an artist. In “Imaginary Players,” he floats effortlessly over an 80s Rene & Angela R&B sample. Boasting about the many avenues of income that support his affluent lifestyle, it’s a swagger-filled track that bleeds braggadocio. “Streets Is Watching” is the first song recorded for the album and the last one he got to play for Biggie before he passed. It’s filled with street gems, this one in particular “Look, If I shoot you, I’m brainless / But If you shoot me, you’re famous!” He spits his lyrics with a fierce tone yet is tired of being unable to damage his adversaries. “Friend or Foe ’98,” a sequel to a song from Reasonable Doubt, gives a detailed view of him as a cold-blooded mafioso don that got the jump on guys at a hotel with a plot for his demise.
Image Courtesy of Def Jam Records
Early in 2022, Jay-Z expressed regret in a tweet about the missed opportunity of recording another classic with In My Lifetime Vol. 1 and how it still haunts his present day. You can almost picture him lying in bed late at night, tossing and turning on his 10,000-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, wondering what he could have been if he had cut some of the fat off the tracklist. The songs that make him sleep-deprived are his attempts to appease commercial influences.
The first song in question is the Puff Daddy-produced “I Know What Girls Like,” which pays homage to a song by The Waitresses. This was the most pop-sounding production up to this point in Jay-Z’s young career. Unfortunately, he sounds uncomfortable on the record. One of the few times this has happened when he’s rapped. The record instantaneously sounded outdated and aged like milk out in the Arizona sun. “(Always Be My) Sunshine” is the other instance of going outside his comfort zone to try and get more airplay on MTV.
Both attempts at trying to grasp a bigger audience feel forced. These two particular songs are products of the “shiny suit era” the name originated from popular rappers wearing metallic suits in music videos. If you are more of a visual learner, check out the “Sunshine” video and see Jay-Z dance around in a light-up Rubix cube wearing Now and Later candy-colored suits to get a better sense of the time. The pressure felt by Def Jam to fit in with the times instead of naturally growing his audience, and he learned from his mistakes the following year. He recorded two gigantic radio hits doing things his way with “Can I Get A..” and “Hard Knock Life (The Anthem),” that jumped started his career into superstar status that we all are familiar with today.
The closer “You Must Love Me” is where Shawn Carter reflects on the pain and shame he has brought upon his mother, brother, and ex-girlfriend. It’s the type of early vulnerability he could express in a real-world way. Stripped down from money, power, and fame is a man who regrets hurting those closest to him. In many ways, this album gets lost in the shuffle of Jay-Z’s discography due to its placement. It’s stuck in the middle of one of his greatest albums ever and one of his highest-selling. The lasting legacy of In My Lifetime Vol. 1 should be that body of work for Jay, laying the blueprint for ascending to the hip-hop crown and never letting go.