Track Listing

1. What We Talkin'- About Jay-Z + Luke Steele (Of Empire Of The Sun)
2. Thank You
3. D.O.A. - (Death Of Auto-Tune)
4. Run This Town - Jay-Z + Rihanna + Kanye West
5. Empire State Of Mind - Jay-Z + Alicia Keys
6. Real As It Gets - Jay-Z + Young Jeezy
7. On To The Next One - Jay-Z + Swizz Beatz
8. Off That - Jay-Z + Drake
9. A Star Is Born - Jay-Z + J. Cole
10. Venus Vs. Mars
11. Already Home - Jay-Z + Kid Cudi
12. Hate - Jay-Z + Kanye West
13. Reminder
14. So Ambitious - Jay-Z + Pharrell
15. Young Forever - Jay-Z + Mr Hudson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56 in Music
• Released on: 2009-09-14
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

CD Description
Six years and three albums since his supposed retirement from the music business comes this eleventh studio effort frommultimedia mogul Shawn "Jigga" Carter. Like the other two 'Blueprint' albums, it has a modern, pop-oriented feel. Recorded in Hawaii, produced primarily by Kanye West and featuring contributions from the likes of Rihanna, Drake, Young Jeezy, Swizz Beatz, Alicia Keys and UK indie-pop band Mr. Hudson, it includes the digital singles 'DOA (Death Of Auto-Tune)'and 'Run This Town'.

Customer Reviews

The King of Hip Hop doesn't disappoint!
I have to say i am surprised at most of the reviews of Blueprint 3 i have read so far, I have played this album from start to finish without skipping a track probably 10 times so far and i am still not getting bored!

The production is top class, and lyrically Jay Z is on top form. I would go as far as to say this is some of the best stuff he has put out since The Blueprint and Reasonable Doubt, and "Empire State of Mind" is one of the tracks of the year by a long mile!

To keep producing music of this standard after all these years takes some doing, thats why Jay Z is the King of Hip Hop, it is mostly commercial stuff but thats where Jay Z sits within Hip Hop, you dont buy a Jay Z album if you are looking for underground or experimental hip hop.

A Disappointment...
Contrary to what I just read the 'Blueprint 3' is far from "absolute quality"...The supposed follow up to 2001's critically acclaimed 'Blueprint' & 2002's 'Blueprint²: The Gift & The Curse' (though in truth the three albums have little if anything in common other than their name) comes after a long wait. In September 2008 'Swagga Like Us' was released - a great single which we were led to believe would appear on both 'Paper Trail' & 'The Blueprint 3'. This was followed by 'Jockin' Jay-Z', 'Brooklyn (Go Hard)' & 'History' - the latter a wonderful Kanye West produced track in homage to the newly elected President Obama. The signs looked good for the forthcoming album...but this proved to be a false dawn.

The album starts off well enough - 'What We Talkin' About' is a solid track featuring flavours of the month Empire of the Sun. One of the album's best tracks 'Thank You' precedes the two lead singles 'D.O.A.' & 'Run This Town'. 'D.O.A.' is a great song but for me the radio friendly 'Run This Town' is weak. I usually love pretty much anything produced by Kanye but for me this is a pop song put on the album to sell records. 'Empire State Of Mind' brings me to a recurring problem with the 'Blueprint 3' - namely good verses, bad choruses! Alica Keys' hook doesn't work for me at all. Similarly the hooks on 'Venus Versus Mars' & 'Reminder' are dismal. As a consequence these Timbaland produced tracks are two of the album's worst. The other track produced by Timbaland 'Off That' featuring Drake (another flavour of the month) is probably the best of the three but in truth none of these songs are worth remembering. They sound like something Timbaland had left over that took him 5 minutes to produce. It is hard to believe this is the same person who gave us 'Dirt off Your Shoulder'.

The album cover alone conveys the move by Jay-Z to try & come out with some 'futuristic sound'. 'Hate' is a great example of how this doesn't work. This is not the typical "chipmunk Soul" we are used to from Kanye. More filler tracks include the Swizz Beatz produced 'On To The Next One' & The Neptunes produced 'So Ambitious'. It's not all bad though! 'Real As It Gets' featuring Young Jeezy is a very solid tune, whilst 'A Star Is Born' & 'Already Home' featuring Kid Cudi (another flavour of the month...but the real thing in my opinion!) are two of the best tracks on the album. Perhaps the song that will split opinion most on the album is the Kanye West produced 'Forever Young' featuring Mr. Hudson, which samples the 80s song of the same name by Alphaville. With this song you are either going to love it or hate it. Right now I am of the opinion that it is a good song but I do think I could get sick of it very easily.

Overall the `Blueprint 3' is a solid album (probably 3.5 stars but definitely not 4). You put it on and you will enjoy it. But is it a masterpiece?! Is it a fitting end to the Blueprint Trilogy that started so well 8 years ago?! Probably not! This album is a step forward from the abysmal `Kingdom Come' but a definite step backwards from `American Gangster'. In terms of `Reasonable Doubt', `The Blueprint' or `The Black Album...it doesn't even come close! I'll end with something another reviewer said on another site..."Jay-Z's like a classic rock group (like, say, U2); we expect him to keep delivering same-old, same-old new music, but are we going to like the Blueprint 3 more than we liked the old classics?! No!"

Not a classic by a long shot
You've got to respect Jay-Z's success and he's impressive live, but only Reasonable Doubt, The Black Album and, at a push, The Blueprint 1, can be viewed as essential amongst his mass of albums. The Blueprint 3 follows his habit of producing overly commercial, hit and miss albums. You get the impression that he doesn't have that much input in the beat making process and is too reliant on the likes of Kanye West and Pharrell Williams producing him radio-friendly hits. I'm also not enjoying Kanye's recent trend of using a voice vocoder, someone needs to tell him that it's extremely annoying!!