Comeback 'Kingdom': Jay-Z returns, but with a tired rerun of earlier sounds and ideas

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(Free-Press-Release.com) November 24, 2006 -- 'H-O-V-A/Let's go get 'em again!" Jay-Z announces near the start of his ninth studio album.

Officially putting an end to the most-hyped but least real retirement in the history of popular music -- and setting aside the fact that he'd already come back for a second album and tour as part of the ill-fated "Best of Both Worlds" project with R. Kelly -- the 36-year-old rapper, label chief and ever-industrious entrepreneur released his much-anticipated comeback album "Kingdom Come" on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, the follow-up to "The Black Album," which was accompanied by an avalanche of farewell hype that included a "final" concert at New York's Madison Square Garden, may be the most self-centered, lackluster, autopilot effort of his career.

To be certain, Shawn Carter deserves his reputation as one of the most agile, free-flowing rappers the genre has ever produced. In the early days of his career, on albums such as his debut effort, "Reasonable Doubt" (1996); "In My Lifetime, Vol. 1" (1997), and the smash-hit quintuple-platinum" Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life" (1998), his obsession with acquiring the material evidence of success could be heard as a former crack dealer who survived the hardscrabble existence of the streets to lust for a better way of life. But the more popular he became, the more tedious this particular strain of his rapping grew.

Source: http://www.yahoo.com
POSTED BY JIM DeROGATIS

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