Jay-Z The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse Review

The album is built from a New York core, with Just Blaze and Kanye West producing the largest share, as they did on the first Blueprint. Around them sits a cast that includes The Neptunes, Timbaland, No I.D., Heavy D, Big Chuck and Dr. Dre. The Gift leans on pop-rap and R&B hooks, while The Curse turns to harder, more combative beats, and the split is the clearest organizing idea on the record. The trouble is that the idea is stronger on paper than on tape: the two discs overlap in mood, and the supposedly hard disc contains some of the lightest songs.

The West Coast comparison is instructive in one specific way. The gangsta and G-funk traditions treated the album as a controlled environment, with a single producer's palette setting the mood, and the songs often ran shorter than their reputations suggest. Here the palette keeps changing. Just Blaze's drums are punchy, a heavy kick under a clean sample flip, but within two songs the record has jumped to a Neptunes bounce, then to a Timbaland rhythm, then to a Kanye soul chop. Each one is competent. None of them makes the others look better.

What is earned is the rapping. Jay-Z slides across tempos with an ease that few peers could match, and he treats the guests as foils instead of crutches. Some of the best moments are the ones where he is simply allowed to rap: the tight, clipped flow of the M.O.P. remix and the long, patient storytelling on the second disc. The weaker spots come when the writing reaches for pop appeal, and a number of tracks on The Gift work harder at being catchy than at being interesting.

What is borrowed is a surprising amount of the concept. Reworking material from other rappers, as the first disc does with A Dream and The Watcher 2, can feel like an homage, but one critic called the approach unimaginative, and the criticism has some force. Other choices, like building a track around a Paul Anka sample after failing to clear Sinatra, read as improvisation instead of design. These are the moments when the album feels like a collection of good ideas looking for a reason to be together.

The flaw that matters most is length. A double album demands a reason for every disc, and this one has a reason for the first and an excuse for the second. The darker material on The Curse is stronger than The Gift in terms of writing, yet it arrives after an hour of lighter songs, so the contrast loses its effect. A West Coast producer would have trimmed the weaker mid-tempo cuts without hesitation.

The album is sequenced as two separate records, and the shift between them is the most noticeable event in the running order. The Gift opens with a flurry of collaborations and radio-ready singles, and the pacing is brisk for the first half. Then it slows into a long stretch of mid-tempo songs with the same mood, so the first disc ends on a thin note. By the time the listener reaches the second disc, a full hour has gone by.

The Curse is the better disc, and it starts well. The opening is harder and more direct, and the best songs here are the ones where the production steps back and lets the narrative run. The problem is the back end, which stacks guests-heavy posse cuts and three bonus tracks that read like leftovers from the sessions. The result is a closing stretch that feels like it is working through a list rather than building to a conclusion.

At this length, pacing becomes a question of attention. Fewer than half the tracks demand a second listen, and the rest ask for patience. A single disc with the best eleven or twelve songs would have flowed as a clear arc, moving from the pop singles into the harder material, and the one-disc reissue effectively proves the point. As released, the order is a catalog, not a sequence.

The second disc contains the best individual runs, particularly the stretch where the production and the storytelling align, but they are separated by long gaps. The most telling sign is how much of the album feels optional. When a record can lose a third of its running time without losing any of its identity, the length is not earned. That is the central sequencing lesson of the album, and Jay-Z has acknowledged it himself.

The Blueprint² sits below both Watch the Throne and 4:44 in this catalog, and the reason is the same for each. Watch the Throne has the stronger sense of event and a tighter sound, while 4:44 has the finest writing of his late career. This record has more raw rapping than either, but it lacks the editing that would have made it a clear statement. It ranks as a good album with a bad structure, and the structure costs it about a point.

It is for listeners who value pure rapping ability, who enjoy hearing Jay-Z in a transitional phase between the Blueprint era and the albums that followed, and who are willing to build their own playlist from a long tracklist. It is also a useful record for anyone interested in the producers of the period, since Just Blaze, Kanye West, The Neptunes and Timbaland all appear at a high point. Skip it if you want a compact album, or if guest-heavy sprawl tires you quickly.

Start with U Don't Know (remix) for the fast, hard flow, Meet the Parents for the storytelling, and Excuse Me Miss for the pop version of the same skill. Then go to The Blueprint to hear the record this one follows and how a tighter set of ideas sounds, and to The Blueprint 3 for another late-2000s attempt at balancing pop reach with rap credibility. The one-disc Blueprint 2.1 is also worth a look as an edit of the same material.

The album has aged better in its parts than as a whole. Its singles still sound pleasant, and the second disc rewards patient listening, while the heavy running time keeps it from being a record to put on casually. It is the kind of album that gets rated higher in a playlist than on the shelf. The strongest evidence of that is that the best twelve songs here would hold up against almost anything in the catalog.