Part of Dec edition XXL mag

"Speaking of the corporate side, Jay’s contract is up at the first of the year, and rumors have him bouncing to join his old Roc-A-Fella protégé Kyambo “Hip-Hop” Joshua and Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin in rebuilding the venerable Sony/Columbia (though the pair just signed one of Jay’s most vocal antagonists, Dipset’s Jim Jones). Looks like it’s gonna be a hot winter. But in the meantime, Jay-Z’s 10th album is on par with some of his finest work. And, for now, he’s lost in the music."


"This new music is coming after Kingdom Come, an album where you showed maturity and growth and laid off of the street content. Do you feel like the rap audience misunderstood where you were going with Kingdom Come?
Art is subjective. It’s subjective, right? So, you know, you gotta be careful with—you don’t have to be careful. You’re really supposed to do what you gotta do, and if people follow you… But the space I was in, it’s very difficult [for the audience] to relate to those emotions. Like, you can relate to the emotions on Blueprint. You know, that’s more—universal feeling. That’s the struggle. It’s hard to relate to the feeling on the other side. And I think it was too much of that, but it was an honest feeling at the time. Like I said, I love that because that’s what I’m supposed to be doing—whether it’s accepted by everybody or not. I’m supposed to be pushing the envelope and trying new things. And people are supposed to say, “Hov, you might have went too far.”