Given his level of output, you might be tempted to forgive Shawn 'Jay-Z' Carter a few lapses. This is his third full length studio album in under two years, but Carter is nothing if not commendably consistent, and 'The Dynasty...' shows just why he remains one of the leading figures in rap music.
The formula remains as simple and as ruthlessly effective as ever. Hooking up, once again, with some relatively new and unheralded producers - the lion's share of the album's music being the work of Just Blaze and Rick Rock - Jay-Z keeps himself just ahead of the curve. This record sounds like you think all rap probably will some time round about next May, never so out-there that it could alienate, but never dated.
Lyrically, too, the themes, attitudes and delivery that have helped Carter sell over 10 million albums (and seen him earn untold greenbacks as a ghost writer, contributing lyrics for everyone from Will Smith to Dr Dre) remain much as anticipated. Tales of street life, the trials and tribulations of the small time hustler and the big time villain and the problems that arise when the pleasures of the flesh become an obsession are all dusted down for another airing.
But what makes this album arguably Jay-Z's most engrossing since 1998's 'In My Lifetime, Volume 1' (his response to the murder of his friend and fellow Brooklyn MC the Notorious BIG) is the dark and often deeply introspective tone struck by much of his writing. The opening lyrics offer a striking initial example: "The theme tune to The Sopranos plays in the key of life
on my mental piano," he raps, folding references in on themselves. "Got a strange way of seeing life, like I'm Stevie Wonder with beads under the do-rag." "I got mental vision, intuition," the embattled voice of 'Streets Is Talking' declaims, while 'Guilty Until Proven Innocent', a transparently veiled comment on outstanding legal entanglements, reveals a vulnerability beneath its creator's defiance: "You never see me boxed in but Jigga's a fighter, plus I'm claustrophobic".
Carter still seems to find it too easy to disrespect women, and success has brought as much reason for paranoia as satisfaction, if the defensive narrator of many of these tracks is truly representative of Jay-Z's prevailing worldview. But 'The Dynasty...', as uncomfortable and frequently nihilist as hip hop can be, remains all too real and very thoroughly observed.
