Today’s Jay-Z track features a guest appearance by Eminem, a rapper whose work I know quite well. This track originally appeared on Jay’Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint, and later on a reissue of Eminem’s first greatest hits collection, Curtain Call.
2001 was a year after the release of The Marshall Mathers LP and just about the height of Eminem’s popularity, not to mention the controversy surrounding him.
Yesterday’s Jay-Z track, ’99 Problems,’ was from 2003’s The Black Album, a record that the rapper claimed at the time would be his last (didn’t quite turn out that way).
Today’s track is from Jay-Z’s first album, Reasonable Doubt, released seven years earlier in the summer of ’96. The song features Notorious B.I.G., another total mystery to me, so this should give me a chance to check them both out.
I feel like I have an adequate working knowledge of most artists considered among the greats. I own or have owned albums even by performers I don’t care for, such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
But it occurred to me recently that I have absolutely no familiarity with the man many critics and fans consider the greatest rapper of all-time — Jay-Z.
It’s funny how some of the best concert experiences involve artists playing somebody else’s music. Not that I’d want to watch a favorite act perform nothing but covers, but a couple of well-placed interpretations can really make a show.
A highlight of the recent Barenaked Ladies show I attended was a raucous late-show medley of recent chart toppers, including Taylor Swift’s ‘I Knew You Were Trouble,’ Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ and Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop.’ In a much different vein, Tift Merritt performed a lovely Joni Mitchell cover on piano.
The Random iTunes Fairy really likes Fountains of Wayne. Today’s post is the fifth Random Weekend selection in the past year, and the second this month.
I don’t keep stats on which artists show up the most on Random Weekends (though now I’m tempted) but I have to believe Fountains of Wayne are up there, especially as a percentage of their total songs in my library.
