Beyonce vs. Jay-Z (by Blow-Up Blog Music Editor, Mr. Paul Levins)

This spring, Beyonce and Jay-Z wed, creating arguably the biggest power couple in music.  This summer, they both released albums, Beyonce’s “4” dropping on June 28th, and Jay’s collaboration with Kanye West, the long-awaited “Watch the Throne,” appearing two weeks later.  Well, for those yet to hear these two offerings, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.  I’ll start with the bad…

The whole thing started in January, when the aforementioned Jigga and Ye released the first taste of “Watch the Throne” with the curiously-titled H.A.M. The title turned out to be an acronym for “hard as a motherfucker.” (yeah, ok, but it still sounds stupid), and honestly, I wasn’t into it, like at all.  I’m a fan of both guys’ musical output (mostly), so that wasn’t a good sign.  A whopping seven months later, the full album hit, and my initial lack of enthusiasm was justified.  It seems like the two rappers, who have never been shy about making sure everyone knows just how aware they are of their own talent, got together to create an album to answer the un-asked question “How awesome are we?”  Their answer?  “Totally.”  I will say in the album’s favor that these beats are EPIC.  I expected nothing less from an album with a solid gold cover called “Watch the Throne,” and the level of production, handled by Kanye’s own production company Very Good Beats and featuring a lot of work by ‘ye himself, is staggering.  Unfortunately, there are several songs that employ the devil of auto-tune (my Kryptonite), including one unforgivable instance where the effect is applied to a Nina Simone sample (the otherwise pretty great “New Day”).  But while the album generally succeeds in the musical department, the actual words these two hip-hop heavyweights lay over said music more often than not falls flat on its face.  I can forgive one or two odes to the self on a rap album as long as the proof is in the pudding; after all self-aggrandizing is no stranger to the world of beats and rhymes. But when it is the sole subject on song after song, all that talent gets drowned under a static sea of narcissism.  There are exceptions.  “New Day” expresses hope for the pair’s future sons, and “Welcome to the Jungle” hints at the vulnerability behind the swagger.  It’s too bad these two songs have the only really irritating beats on the album.  There are actually a couple of great tracks here:  “Murder to Excellence” attempts to provide some context to all the braggadocio and sounds fantastic in the process, and the Otis Redding-sampling “Otis” is the top tier of the self-aggrandizing tracks, clever and fun, towards the end of which we get the line “Jay is Chillin’, ‘Ye is chillin’, what more can I say, we killin’ em.”  If only they could have left it at that and moved on.

Beyonce fairs much better on her fourth solo album, simply titled “4.”  While she hasn’t held much appeal for me in the past, even going so far as to annoy the hell out of me during the Destiny’s Child days, this new album has been in heavy rotation on my iPod since I first listened to it.  Simply stated, it’s a huge leap forward for the singer, voice-wise, song-wise, and production-wise.  There is one caveat:  I listened to the last song on the album one time, and immediately deleted it from my computer.  The song is called “Run the World (Girls)” and it flat out does not fit with the rest of the songs at all.  It sounds exactly like all of the other bland club songs that have been populating the charts for the last few years, repetitive, electronic, and hollow.  So it’s no surprise that it served as the album’s first single.  It feels tacked on, like a record exec’s contractual demand, so I don’t consider it a part of the album proper.  As for the rest of the songs, they are all stunners.  Album-opening track “1+1” is the attention grabber, a slow-burner with a deeply felt performance of what feels like very personal lyrics.  Right of the bat, you notice a huge difference from her past output.  Her voice has matured into a powerhouse of soul, and her songwriting has matured as well.  She has developed from a sassy club kid to a grown-ass woman.  The album is also her most adventurous musically.  See “I Care,” in which she pits her impressive vocal range against a screaming guitar solo, or check out the drum-line percussion on “End of Time” and “Countdown,” the latter of which seems to cram half a dozen songs styles successfully into one marathon ode to devotion.  And all over the album, you can hear re-appropriations of 90s R&B tropes (casual horns, digital instrumentation, the entirety of “Love on Top“), augmented with new technology for a musical profile that sounds at the same time nostalgic and fresh.  I’m surprised and delighted by this album; good one B.

Paul Levins for Blow-Up Blog