The Blueprint 3

Without its filler, this album could have been at least good, if not great. But, for better or for worse, this is what Jay wanted us to hear right now. It’s just a shame that it’s not entirely worth hearing.

By all indications, he'll continue to make good but not great music, replicating the form of his finest records minus the electric charge.

Just as The Blueprint 3 seems to have pulled it off, it peters out in a mass of indistinct tracks.

"American Gangster" was the last time we saw the real Jay-Z--soulful, lyrically adept, his narrative streak reborn with a newfound alter ego--but here he is back to treading water.

Jay overreaches, leaning too heavily on by-the-numbers production from Kanye West and Timbaland, and muffling his own voice in favor of a guest-heavy tracklist.

On The Blueprint 3, Jay-Z, for arguably the first time in his career, sounds tired and old; too tired and too old to create a new blueprint, but not to create a third copy; too tired and too old to create new styles and ideas, but not to regurgitate them; too tired and too old to tell a new story, but not to tell an old story of a time when swagga belonged to the gods, one in particular.

The pitch-correction software is alive and well even on this record.... This glaring inconsistency is the least of BP3’s missteps.

The real inexcusable thing about The Blueprint 3 is how boring and sterile it all sounds.

He still sounds temperamentally incapable of making a bad album, but he's made his first boring one.