After years of being a hater...years of insisting that I didn't like a single one of his songs, or really anything about him...I did it...
I purchased a Jay-Z album.
"Reasonable Doubt" - the classic debut, or so everyone says. I figured that was the place to start...see if I could like him a bit more when he was young and hungry, see if I might find an appreciation of his music.
I think I knew beforehand that I wouldn't hate it. I mean, if I expected to hate every song on it, then I wouldn't have wasted my money. But I also knew that I'd never really given him a full chance. I missed this when it originally came out in 96...and everything I'd heard from radio & MTV tracks never really appealed to me. And then as his popularity grew, so did the ego and persona, and I just got turned off by Jay-Z and his music.
But man, there is some nice stuff on here. Having Primo produce a few tracks certainly never hurts. "Feelin' It" is probably my favorite song...and to think...I could have been listening to this song for the last 10 years if I didn't have this (mostly) irratational hatred of Jay-Z. "Dead Presidents II" is damn nice too...what's the story with this song? I know I have the reissue of the album, hence the "II" on the end of this track, so what did it sound like on the original pressing?
I can't say I'm in a hurry to collect the rest of his discography...but I'm a lot more interested than I was a week ago.