(Roc-A-Fella)
Following the horrendous project with R. Kelly and his last beef with Nas, Jay-Z is trying to right the ship in a major way with his ninth solo album, .
This time around Jay has decided to take the risk of dropping a double album, a move that can single-handedly make or break an artist's legacy. Wu-Tang's flew over everyone's heads while Biggie's insured his mythical status the second he passed away. Making this album a sequel to the so-called classic is a clever attempt on Jay's part to make fans forget about his past letdowns and remember his last piece of good work.
On the other hand, making a sequel to a highly revered album is a dangerous move, considering that sequels, in any artistic format, rarely live up to the originals. Jay-Z is betting the house on this one, with the hopes that this release will forever keep his name in the 'greatest of all time' debate.
The first disc, titled \The Gift,"" begins with ""A Dream,"" where an emotional Jay-Z describes a dream where he talks with Biggie. The track is a fine tribute until Biggie's first verse from ""Juicy"" is unnecessarily added at the end. This inability to create a good track from beginning to end is seen several times on this disc, from the overdone production of ""Hovi Baby"" to the Tupac rip off ""'03 Bonnie & Clyde.""
However, even lower points of this disc are easily the two Neptunes produced tracks, ""Excuse Me Miss"" and ""Fuck All Nite."" Here, Jay spits uninspiring braggadocio over terrible production that could lead The Neptunes down the flash-in-the-pan path of Swizz Beats.
The second disc, ""The Curse,"" features a noticeable change in style as the beats are generally darker, while Jay frequently flips the script by making several conceptual tracks. The best of these is ""Meet the Parents,"" where Jay tells some chilling hood tales over a grimy, thumping Just Blaze beat.
Unfortunately, the other main conceptual tracks on the disc fail to live up to this song. ""Some How Some Way"" suffers from a mediocre beat and unimpressive guest appearances, while ""A Ballad For The Fallen Soldier,"" though featuring a good war/life in the hood metaphor, is torn down by yet another awful Neptunes beat. Jay-Z, though, is smart enough to stick mainly with what he does best, and that is the club track.
He strikes gold with the ""U Don't Know"" remix, which features the highly energized M.O.P, the newest members of the Roc-A-Fella family. The combination of an amped-up version of the original beat and M.O.P creates instant dopedness.
Since Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z hasn't put out a consistently good album from front to back, so trying to do so on a double album is probably asking too much of himself. There is definitely enough solid material on to keep his career going, but after this release, Jay shouldn't ever be mistaken for the greatest of all time. Some will say that Jay-Z lost his hunger for success, but Jay knows that he can make any project go double platinum in his sleep. It's a good thing too, as it seems like he was dozing off while making .
(Sony)
Being the first notable supergroup of this decade is not easy business. Audioslave is treading in the territory of Cream and the Travelling Wilburys, and that is sacred ground. Unfortunately for lead singer Chris Cornell, he's already participated in an absolutely terrible supergroup, Temple of the Dog, with Eddie Vedder and various other former Seattle hotshots. Yet fortunately for Chris Cornell and the remnants of Rage Against the Machine, they put out a good album. Good is the operative word here, because it is not a great album.
For all intents and purposes, the Rick Rubin-produced album rocks. However, it's an oddity. There are no two ways about it, this sounds like a Soundgarden album with the low-end chunks really beefed up with a little less finesse. This is fine because Soundgarden was a phenomenal band, but it doesn't really break any new ground.
Cornell can still howl like a demon erupting out of hell and Morello's guitar still rides the fine line between funky and fuzzy, but the album isn't quite right. The first half moves along at a pretty frenzied pace with trademark Cornell lyrics and grooves. ""Gasoline"" and ""What You Are"" sound like they're straight off of Badmotorfinger, but the second half is lost in itself.
""Hypnotize"" sounds like Alice in Chains being backed by the Commodores and ""Exploder"" is just too obvious and too easy. At certain points, the album stops sounding like Soundgarden and shifts into sounding like what it is: Rage Against the Machine fronted by Soundgarden's frontman, which is kind of a confusing sound.
All in all, as stated before, this album rocks and Soundgarden fans will be more than happy with it. Rage fans, however, will probably be disappointed, being that album has no hip-hop and no leftist propaganda.
(Saddle Creek)
Sure, Bright Eyes have a lot going for them; their solid, personal songs and winning arrangements have understandably won them a large, devoted following. Musical merit aside, however, they'll always be as easy target for ridicule, especially with front man Conor Oberst's explosively emotional vocals and over-the-top desperation.
It should stand to reason, then, that their charity album comprised solely of traditional Christmas covers should please all; providing plenty of material both for fans to be moved by and for cynics to make fun of. , however, is so uninspired that it fails to do both; it's an album so terrible that it even fails to provide the novelty value expected from such an ill-conceived concept.
The band, perhaps unable to decide whether to play these standards sincerely or with irony, opts to play them as lifelessly as possible. Oberst and company fail to breathe intensity into such classics as ""Little Drummer Boy"" and ""Silent Night."" In fact, Oberst is so detached that he doesn't even deliver his trademark voice quiver.
The band sleepwalks through these 11 songs, never making up for Oberst's uncharacteristically wispy vocal delivery. Meanwhile, their once interesting arrangements are all but gone, now limited only to the occasional placement of drum higher in an otherwise flat mix.
A disappointment in every sense, is a lazy effort, serving as an insult to both the music community and the Nebraskan AIDS charity which it seeks to support.
