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The Blueprint 3 isn't a one-man tour de force like the first. Jay is upstaged once or twice by his guests, and while the productions are stellar throughout--Timbaland appears three times, and No I.D. gets multiple credits also--it's clear there's less on Jay's mind this time.
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The long-awaited Blueprint 3 doesn't disappoint. In fact, the album may just be the blueprint for hip-hop music to come.
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The music doesn’t disappoint.... [But] The flaws are obvious. The three Timbaland songs feel out of place. Lyrically, Jay-Z works only as hard as he has to.
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The Blueprint's vaunted resuscitation of sample-based boom-bap rap production is replaced here by big corny synth wipes, a sometimes-fascinating corollary to Jay’s corporate sense of purpose.
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He still sounds temperamentally incapable of making a bad album, but he's made his first boring one.
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"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.
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Blueprint is hip-hop as big business, and Jay retains his CEO throne.
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The Blueprint 3 splits the difference between its two predecessors, with Jay-Z sounding hungrier than he has in years on about half the tracks, while sharing time with guest stars or grappling with undercooked production on the rest.
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While not as groundbreaking as the first Blueprint was, this is nonetheless a strong record, its A-list guests and production tempered nicely by the inclusion of in-the-now collaborators of the order of Young Jeezy and Empire Of The Sun front man Luke Steele.
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Despite bringing in all these names to make it an event album, The Blueprint 3 delivers because of hefty beats and quality rapsmanship, nothing else.
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The real inexcusable thing about The Blueprint 3 is how boring and sterile it all sounds.
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The pitch-correction software is alive and well even on this record.... This glaring inconsistency is the least of BP3’s missteps.
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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.
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Blueprint 3 is the kind of stuck-on-stupid, event-driven money pit that proves while Jay-Z's at a point where he's got no one to answer to but himself, he's still capable of an entire hour of failing to take his own advice.
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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.
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The Blueprint 3 starts well enough. Its first half is good to great....But around the time we get to the Timbaland-produced, Limbaugh-dissing, Drake-featuring 'Off That,' a song about how far ahead of the curve Jay is, the album's quality falls off considerably.
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Jay-Z is trying to come across as brand new, but he only succeeds in looking like an old brand in need of a revamp.
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By all indications, he'll continue to make good but not great music, replicating the form of his finest records minus the electric charge.
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The album is a hip-hop feast, for sure, filled to the brim with elite production and elite rapping, but it lacks the hungriness, the spirit, and the craziness that mark a classic album.
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It’s Jay-Z’s world, but on The Blueprint 3 he’s considerate enough to let listeners perambulate about for a most enjoyable visit.
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Just as The Blueprint 3 seems to have pulled it off, it peters out in a mass of indistinct tracks.
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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.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 155 out of 215
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Mixed: 39 out of 215
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Negative: 21 out of 215
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D.TNov 16, 2009
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Nov 14, 2011
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A.C.Sep 20, 2009