Reasonable Doubt

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Here’s a head-scratcher for JAŸ-Z fans: Why wasn’t <i>Reasonable Doubt</i> considered an instant classic back in 1996? After all, Jay’s debut album puts his lyrical skills on full display. And the subject matter on <i>Reasonable Doubt</i>, while familiar—this is a record that goes deep on the perils and spoils of the drug trade—is rendered with a density that makes it feel new. Yet for all the album’s well-deserved accolade, hit single, and sales accomplishment, <i>Reasonable Doubt</i> was still viewed as a bit of an outlier upon release—as was Jay himself. Whereas Nas’ work brimmed with writerly introspection, and Biggie’s verses exuded raw charisma, <i>Reasonable Doubt</i>-era Jay is somewhere in-between: He depicts himself as a born hustler who embraces the high life, but who seems too preoccupied to enjoy it. Is the Jay we meet on <i>Reasonable Doubt</i> supposed to be a hero? (No way—he’s too cold.) A villain? (Nope—too empathic.) It’s hard to get a handle on a guy who, on <i>Reasonable Doubt</i>, sometimes sounds so soured on his own succe. “We hustle out of a sense of hopelessne,” Jay proclaims on the intro to “Can I Live.” “Sort of a desperation/Through that desperation, we become addicted/Sort of like the fiends we accustomed to servin’.” The JAŸ-Z who dominates <i>Reasonable Doubt</i> may be rich—or at least on his way—but with beats so spare, and a delivery so quietly intense, you could easily mistake him for starving. That tension can be felt throughout the record, on which Jay lays out a grand vision—wealth, mobility, autonomy—which he executes with a scrappy attitude and a small budget. On <i>Reasonable Doubt</i>, Jay twists words for sport (“Two 22’s”) and flexes like a battle rapper (the Biggie-featuring “Brooklyn’s Finest”). And when he explores the moral ambiguity of his busine, it isn’t for pity or forgivene, but to externalize a reality he knows doesn’t make sense (“Regrets”). “Don't cry, it is to be,” he raps on “D’evil.” “In time I'll take away your miseries and make ’em mine.” <i>Reasonable Doubt</i> doesn’t just capture his ambition—it captures his PTSD. The album is an evolutionary step toward the lavish, corporate-don rap that came to define the late 1990s—and that Jay himself would help to define, in no small part through his future work with Puff Daddy. But <i>Reasonable Doubt</i> also captures the gritty details of urban life that had defined hip-hop—especially New York hip-hop—since “The Message,” or even The Last Poet. That Jay had to start his own label, the soon-to-be-mighty Roc-A-Fella Record, to actually get it out makes a kind of sense: For however big he became, <i>Reasonable Doubt</i> feels rough and underground, the sound of a self-made striver who has limitless confidence, yet who still can’t tell his fish fork from his dessert one. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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