Magna Carta Holy Grail

The weirdly distant and safe Magna Carta Holy Grail abides by the tried and true business principle that the customer is always right: you just have to remember who the customer is here.

While clearly wanting to be a legendary piece of extravagant and influential work, it suffers the most from its inherent apathy, a type of intangible element that makes it come off as equal parts careless and desperate.

Magna Carta... Holy Grail lacks the year-defining singles that made Blueprint 3 evade “flop” status, but it’s undeniably the most cohesive thing Jay’s been a part of since the original Blueprint.

Jay-z attempts to balance his great wealth, tough history and news responsibility while retaining his grit. Magna Carta... generally pulls it off. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Some wildly uneven wordplay, on a needlessly bloated set, suggests the Brooklyn king's crown is slipping. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Magna Carta... Holy Grail isn't a dreadful record but it's a redundant one. [Sep 2013, p.103]

This, then, is AOR: Adult Orientated Rap. Luckily, though, Jay-Z still turns out work of impressive authority.

Jay often sounds like he's trying to convince himself that he should still be excited about making music. What's disappointing is, he doesn't always seem to be winning that argument.

On Magna Carta... Holy Grail, Jay comes off as even more pretentious than Kanye.

Jay-Z co-opts and redefines current trends to reassert his ongoing cultural potency.

Magna Carta... Holy Grail isn't a total bust, but neither is it anywhere close to Jay-Z's finest moments. Instead it's a strange and anodyne record, that speaks of a king, nay a god, who may not have lost his crown, but would benefit from leaving his lofty boardroom once in a while.

The bulk of Magna Carta, however, really is just an obscenely rich dude gloating about his spoils. Where West continues to introduce new twists in his ever-unfolding story—with Yeezus, he’s reinvented himself as rap’s most compelling villain—Jay-Z has remained static, frozen in permanent victory.

This isn't Watch the Throne, full of rich and weighty contributions from a man who is still enormously talented. It's rap music as a transaction, with a host of stars and hip names wrangled together to convince you it's not.

The bizarre juxtaposition of Jay-Z on hit and miss form and a borderline-perfectly produced record makes it a trying listen.

It’s interesting, but it’s never happy, sad, angry or romantic. It’s not even overly smug.

MCHG packs a lot of ideas, and not all of them prove very useful, or even well-articulated, by the end. The pieces congeal, eventually, to form a semblance of one of our most prominent cultural figures. The image just isn’t as defined, as focused, or as powerful, as it once was.

Running to an hour long, Magna Carta becomes exhausting, bumping familiar motifs with such frequency that, as the album nears its close, the senses feel entirely numbed.

This feels lazy, smug, and fundamentally empty.

I rank this album alongside Kingdom Come, which in a way was a transitional album toward the superior Blueprint III. Like others, I see (perhaps wistfully so) MCHG operating as a sort of stopgap until he releases something great, like a Blueprint IV.

Jay proves less of a presence than ever, and his rapping is lifeless and anemic enough to skirt self-parody.

Jay-Z’s latest does little to prove that he can come up with anything that isn’t entirely predictable.

Ostentatious as it is, there’s no denying that Magna Carta… Holy Grail is filled to the brim with satisfying, big-budget production.... It’s just a shame that Jay-Z doesn’t rap ‘em for all they’re worth.

More of that raw Jay and less of the glitz could have salvaged the album.

It's inevitable that the usual litany of labels and put-downs dominates Jay-Z's concerns; Shawn Carter's wraps-to-riches story is the meta-narrative to all his albums and only fades a little in the umpteenth retelling. ... [But] it's the varied production – the sinuous work of Timbaland, in the main--that really elevates Magna Carta Holy Grail beyond the usual Jay-Z document.

Jay-Z, being Jay-Z, spends most of the time banging on about how rich he is, how brilliant it is being married to Beyoncé, and how irritating it is that some people don't find him quite as wonderful as he does.

Magna Carta offers only a few vivid images but even fewer full songs. The album's relentless spewing of wealth will be enough to repel some listeners, but that's not exactly the problem here, it's that his brags are often unimaginative and humourless.

Though Timbaland’s productions always hold some sly surprises, “Magna Carta ... Holy Grail” comes across largely as a transitional album, as if Jay-Z has tired of pop but hasn’t found a reliable alternative.

"Magna Carta Holy Grail" certainly is shimmering, heavy and at times sonically stunning, and Jay-Z can toss a brilliant metaphor like it's nothing. But a true masterpiece harnesses intellect and adventure to push forward not only musically but also thematically.

The New Yorker's music has become less urgent and original ... This album sounds the musical equivalent of being chauffeur driven around Jay-Z's kingdom in an air conditioned, bullet-proofed executive limo while the man himself reclines his plush leisure seat beside you, casually pointing out the scenes of his former glories.

Magna Carta Holy Grail is where Jay-Z’s emceeing finally meets his “High Rap” ambitions. This is easily the best rhyming Jay’s done since American Gangster. But a sharp Shawn on the mic isn’t a surprise. What is a surprise is that this is the most cohesive project Jay’s put together since The Blueprint.

There is very little humour and some of the production is flat out boring.

His flows are lazy, uninspired, and flat out boring.

His 12th album is certainly magnum: 59 often leaden, mostly hubristic minutes to make that 1215 Grand Charter seem like light relief.

Beyond some excellent beats and a few flashes of lyrical prowess, Magna Carta... Holy Grail doesn’t invite the kind of intrigue that Jay-Z is capable of. He spends the whole album reminding us that he is the center of attention but by about halfway through most people will be doing something else.

Mostly, this overstuffed album is about Jay-Z and the self-congratulation of his high-powered friends.

Magna Carta’s a mess, and not even an entertaining one--it’s simply a dull record by someone who’s in deep danger of going down as a dull human being.

He may be coming to grips with the fact that there are limits to what you can do at the top, as his clash with Billboard regarding his Samsung deal showed, but that doesn’t stop him--lyrically, promotionally, or otherwise--from trying to push the boundaries out a little further.

Magna Carta Holy Grail is a solid example of a decent modern rap album and nothing more.

Give it up to the one where Beyonce pledges gangsta devotion and, best of all, the one where the "billionaire" (he says) looks back at the betrayals of his own departed head of family with something that feels like dread.

Has Jay-Z made another classic? Only time will truly tell, but my gut says MCHG will ultimately fall just short of classic status. Where does it rank among his now 15 albums? I’ve got it somewhere in the top third.