It’s a dice game and sometimes you crap
Who would’ve thought you’d get popped one time & rat?
Now, you know that’s bad when your sister is mad
And your son gotta grow up like, “This is my dad?”
The labeling of a snitch is a lifetime scar
You’ll always be in jail, *****, just minus the bars.
With his third album, Jay really starts to go in some strange and interesting new directions. The use of samples and beats here is really interesting and reveals that, even this early in his career, Jay was already chafing at restriction. Nowhere is it more obvious than in Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem), the title track of this album, which utilizes a sample from the musical Annie. It’s a choice both radically outside the box and, once you hear it, absolutely perfect. Setting aside the happiness I feel when I picture gangbangers riding around with the sounds of Annie blasting out of their speakers, there’s more going on here. Jay is seeing past the exterior to find the attitude that he values wherever it is. Most rappers wouldn’t ever think of finding empathy between themselves and their audiences and the little white girls doing a production number in a musical, but Jay gets the attitude; he says in the liner notes that he loves the song because the girls aren’t crying about their situation, they’re just stating the facts straight up. It’s not a sad song, in other words, in its tone; in the bad situation, the girls of Annie have their heads up and they’re aware of their situation, but also just getting on with things as best they can. It’s this ability to dig under the surface that really elevates Jay in his field in my opinion. The album isn’t very consistent though. Sometimes the experimentation works as on the minimal Ride or Die; other times, it really doesn’t as on the annoying Foxy Brown reteam Paper Chase. The experimental musical stretching doesn’t really make up for the fact that more than a couple of these songs are mediocre. One song, Reservoir Dogs, is downright terrible with some of the worst lyrics I’ve ever heard. The songs that work here are quite good. Besides the title track, there’s the grim A Week Ago, a story of betrayal and violence; If I Should Die is a moving statement of purpose and peace with death; and Coming of Age (Da Sequel) reteams Jay & Bleek as we catch up with the characters from Reasonable Doubt on down the line after tension has grown between them. In keeping with the interesting twist Jay puts on his songs, Da Sequel doesn’t end in a hail of gunfire or betrayal as other rappers might have it; the tension and anger between the two is resolved in a moment of understanding and honesty. Who would have expected? This album isn’t the masterpiece a lot of Jay’s albums are, but it’s a clear transitional album. When it’s good, it’s very good. As a signal that Jay’s music would be more complex and off-beat going forward, it’s perfect; obviously, it took a little time for his songcraft to catch up with his intriguing experiments. 3 stars.
tl;dr – Jay’s music moves in experimental, outside the box directions; some experiments fail & some lyrics are disappointing, but, while transitional & inconsistent, it’s got a few good tracks. 3 stars.