“Jay-Z is here! If I had a dime for every time I’ve said that, I’d have ten cents.” – Betty White
Jay-Z is to hip-hop what Green Day is to punk. The ties that bind them share some awful descriptive words – Sellout, ripoff, lazy, unimaginative, sloppy, and almost immediately tiresome.
Studying the metrics of NBC viewership must be interesting. Did people remain tuned into SNL to watch Jay-Z rap a fucking MEDLEY of past work? Why was he even there? If you’re going to pretend to remain relevant, why lead with a retrospective? There’s a very good reason that he hadn’t been on the show since 2002. He hasn’t done anything important, or even good since then. Furthermore, he was only supporting cast to Lenny Kravitz, and fucking Will from Will & Grace last time he was there.
After bashing his way through past work with ugly-as-hell segues, his second performance was a work that may be the single laziest hip hop rip off ever.
Jay-Z literally wakes up, puts coffee on, and flips through old CDs looking for something to rap over – poorly.
What the HELL is up with lyrical trash like this:
Fear not when, fear not why,
Fear not much while were alive,
Life is for living not living up tight,
See ya somewhere up in the sky,
After that profound, youthful verse, he follows with:
Slamming Bentley doors,
Hopping out of Porsche’s,
Popping up on Forbes lists,
Gorgeous,
Hold up,
N-ggas thought i lost it,
They be talking bullshit
I be talking more shit
They nauseous
Yes, we ARE nauseated, Jay-Z. Your comeback to show us how you haven’t lost it was to steal, beat-for-beat a song from 1984, update it in no way, and just rap over the verses.
Pop music (which is all Jay-Z has sold for the past decade), is supposed to appeal to a broad and stupid denominator. There’s a reason Jay-Z is the favorite rapper of every white girl ever.
But when does enough become enough? Pop music, especially rappop, hasn’t done an original thing in years, and Jay-Z is its king.