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“The singles are the best songs on the album” is the last thing die-hard music fans (a.k.a.

It’s as scattered, if occasionally lively (the Neptunes-produced “I Just Wanna Love You (Give It 2 Me)” is a favorite) as you’d expect a glorified compilation to be. Instead, it’s a showcase for at-their-best Roc-a-Fella labelmates like Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek, neither of whom overshadow Hova. The forgotten album during Jay-Z’s peak, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia isn’t as fondly recalled for a good reason: it’s barely a Jay-Z album. When the most interesting thing about an album is its distribution model, that’s probably not a good thing. 1 is by no means a failure - Jay-Z is still more street than pop (especially on “Streets Is Watching”), only with a flashier sound, and his flow is top-notch - but it’s a rough draft of the all-time great he would soon become. Artists can surprise on their debut, having spent months, if not years fine tuning their material, but once they break big, like Jay-Z did with Reasonable Doubt, they have to strike again quickly with album #2, before the general public moves onto someone else. It’s a perfectly fine album, with a few highlights, but after the revelatory Blueprint, Jay Guevera’s for-once-laughable arrogance feels misplaced and messy.

Where one was almost totally devoid of guest stars, the other was stuffed with superfluous appearances from Lenny Kravitz, Young Chris, and Sean Paul, among others. The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse is a confusing double-album sequel to The Blueprint.

The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse (Jay-Z) The hibernation joke is an easy one to make, but it’s true: he sleepwalked through his much-anticipated return. Now, most albums would sound like a letdown after Black, but what hurt Kingdom Come was its sleepiness. One of the more polarizing albums in his discography, Kingdom Come, one of Jay-Z’s many comebacks, is considered an oft-overlooked masterpiece to some (including the Grammy voters, who nominated it for Best Rap Album - Kanye ended up winning with Graduation) and a major step-down from The Black Album to others. If he had stuck with one or the other, The Blueprint 3 could have been successful, or at least not as irrelevant instead, it sounds like Jay-Z had no idea what kind of album he wanted to make, which one of his personae to emulate, resulting in one unfocused whole. The Blueprint 3 finds Jay-Z stuck between two identities: the guy who grew up in the Marcy Houses, and the sir who pals around with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and owns basketball teams. I don’t think anyone will cry foul over Unfinished Business‘ lack of an inclusion. One note: I didn’t include collaboration records, like The Best of Both Worlds or even Watch the Throne. It certainly seems like you can’t talk about one without the other, so in honor of the new additions to their discography, I thought now’s as good a time as any to rank both Hova and Ye’s studio albums, from worst to best. Yeah, I had no idea, either, but it’s true: the mentor dropped Magna Carta Holy Grail, hopefully not into a toilet (that’s a cell phone joke, you see) while the student put out Yeezus. You may have heard that Jay-Z and Kanye West recently released new albums.