The Jay-Z album Kendrick Lamar prefers to ‘The Blueprint’: “The raps was dope”
The Blueprint often crops up as a fan-favourite for Jay-Z fans, but Kendrick Lamar feels he has a superior album. Hov famously released his sixth effort on September 11th, 2001, comprising of sample-based production from the likes of Kanye West, B!nk and Just Blaze. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, bolstered by singles like ‘Izzo (H.O.V.A.)’, ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’, ‘Jigga That N*gga’ and ‘Song Cry’.
However, Kendrick once revealed that he puts 2003’s The Black Album on a higher pedestal than The Blueprint. The Compton rapper first heard it when he was around 15 or 16 and played it to other students at Centennial High School.
“I love that album,” he told Complex. “That’s one of my favourite Jay albums. Everybody say Blueprint, I love The Black Album. First time I heard ‘Encore’ I flipped out. I was probably in tenth grade playing that in class like ten times in a row.”
Adding, “Mainly because he was saying he was on the verge of retiring, and then he just hit it in the clutch. Like, the beats was dope, the raps was dope. It’s crazy because everybody says Blueprint; ‘Blueprint is crazy.’ I think Black Album is right behind it, though. He had ’99 Problems’, crazy stuff like that.”
The Black Album was intended to be Jay’s final album before retirement until he began recording again a couple of years later. He recruited some of the best producers in the game, including The Neptunes, Eminem, Timbaland and 9th Wonder.
Kendrick also appreciates his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, which dropped in 1996, citing his flow as inspiration during the early days of his career. “I had to double back and listen to Jay-Z once I started writing,” he said. “And one of my favourite tracks on there is ‘Politics As Usual’. Just the vibe of it and the flow. I really captured that flow and stole that cadence just being a student of the game. It really stuck with me.”
In the eyes of KDot, his most impressive verse is, “Y’all relatin’ no waitin’/ I’ll make your block infrared hot: I’m like Satan/ Y’all feel a n*gga’s struggle/ Y’all think a n*gga love to hustle behind the wheel / Trying to escape my trouble.”
Due to the East Coast and West Coast rivalry, it took Kendrick a little longer than he would have liked to get into Jay’s music. “I got into Reasonable Doubt like 2002, 2001,” he admitted. “I was super late. On the West Coast, we weren’t really playing East Coast music like that just because of all the beef stuff that was going on—we was really influenced by that. I’m like nine, ten, 11 years old. I don’t wanna listen to nothing on the East Coast. Everything everybody was playing was Death Row.”
Things came full circle in 2012 when Kendrick collaborated with Jay-Z on a remix of ‘Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe’, which originally appeared on 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city album. Hov described him as “very talented.”