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 By
Erik Hage
Back
in the day (1928), one of my favorite old-school lyric-droppers,
William Butler (aka W.B.) Yeats, (non)rhymed, “That is no
country for old men. The young/In one another’s arms, birds
in the trees/—Those dying generations—at their song.” You
have to think that Yeats was expressing a general sense of
dread and anxiety that Jay-Z and Mariah Carey should
be feeling these days—Mariah perhaps more than Jay,
as Hova’s keen business acumen and networking skills have
continually staved off his extinction.
The latest component of his integrated marketing plan for
The Blueprint 3 is courting the Pitchfork-reading indie-rock
hipsterati by attending a Grizzly Bear concert and then espousing
to MTV, in a grandiose statement that reminded me of Rocky’s
anti-Cold War speech in Rocky IV, “The thing I want
to say to everyone [is that] . . . what the indie-rock movement
is doing right now is very inspiring. These concerts, they’re
not on the radio, no one hears about them, and there’s 12,000
people in attendance . . . so it will force hip-hop to fight
to make better music, because it can happen, because that’s
what rap did to rock.” (I’m sure Jay told Beyoncé—he drops
the acute accent around the house, so it sounds “like bee-YAWNsss”—“Dress
down so we blend.”)
This is not new information, but a whole lot better of an
idea than that collaboration with Linkin Park—or the one with
Coldplay’s Chris Martin. (Right now, Jay-Z is playing Beatles
Rock Band and lightbulbs are going off everywhere.)
In fact, only weeks ago, a “news” story reported that Jay-Z
was envious of Martin’s yoga skills. Apparently, Jay-Z has
decided that the new business model involves steering away
from beefs and toward ingratiation. (Flattery is the new beef—even
if it’s weird flattery, apparently.) The thing we can’t forget,
however, is that beyond his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt,
and the first of the Blueprint albums (2001), Hova
primarily makes woefully mediocre (to outright bad) albums
that are frankensteined together to the tune of many zeros
and producers such as Kanye West and Timbaland. And let’s
not forget that he calls himself “Hova” because it’s short
for Jehovah. (And we condemned Sting for the Tantric thing.
Shame on us.)
But beyond currying favor with indie rockers, Hypa is up to
the same old music model, with West taking the lion’s share
of tracks and Timbaland claiming a few on The Blueprint
3, an album full of misfired intentions. This becomes
apparent on the opening track, “What We Talkin’ About,” which
tries to remain a rap song while glomming onto the recent
synth-pop revival in alternative rock. The track even features
alt singer Luke Steele (Empire of the Sun, Sleepy Jackson).
 A
more hip-hop-integrated synth bed fuels “Thank You,” making
it more palatable, but elsewhere huge yawners erupt out of
nowhere, especially the wannabe expansive hometown anthem
“Empire State of Mind,” an arena-sized, 500-pound pile of
horse dung and fakery that even Alicia Keys’ Liza Minnelli-tweaked
chorus can’t lift toward the sky. Perhaps Jay’s only compelling
moment is his railing against the already widely railed against
Autotune on “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune).” It’s not the fact
that he’s condemning the popular pitch-correction tool, but
the fact that he stoops to lyrics like “This ain’t for sing-along/This
is Sinatra at the opera, bring a blonde/Preferably with a
fat ass who can sing a song.”
Of course there is some downright warranted griping
about Auto-Tune, especially when a vocalist of Mariah Carey’s
caliber suddenly turns to that . . . thing just to
fit in as she does on Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel. (I
envisioned the highest of her seven octaves either breaking
the machine, or summoning all of the dogs in the neighborhood
to course into the studio and rip the damn thing apart.) “More
Than Just Friends” is an infectiously smooth pop-soul track
with real legs, but it’s hampered by the bells, whistles,
and clotted-cream production approach of The-Dream and Tricky
Stewart, who herald sonic busy-ness and cleverness over a
good song foundation. Even the usual buyers who scoop up Carey
albums (no matter what) seem to be shying away in hordes,
fully aware that she’s having a bad millennium. The album’s
chart debut this week—a lackluster No. 3, below the latest
from Barbra Streisand and emo kids Paramore—does little to
restore her superstar standing.
This might have a lot to do with the first single, “Obsessed.”
One gets the sense that—perhaps at a low-animal level—her
audience is put off by the idea that Mariah, who needs them
now more than ever, would come forth with a tired groove and
Auto-Tune-soaked vocal. It’s OK for T-Pain, who doesn’t have
much in his arsenal and lacks the sheer history of
Carey, but the public can sense when a starting-to-become-long-in-the-tooth
artist—yes, the hyphen is my own personal Auto-Tune—is trying
to merely stay with the times rather than push their own artistic
envelope. (Though why Rod Stewart wasn’t shunted into Peter-Frampton-sized
obsolescence after his late 1970s disco hit “Da Ya Think I’m
Sexy” is still beyond me.)
But Mariah also hedges her bets with her older audience by
covering Foreigner’s 1980s cup of sentimental hogwash “I Want
to Know What Love Is” and playing it relatively straight.
Perhaps she seeks to replicate the success of her early ’90s
cover of the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There.” Or perhaps she has
seen that a cheesy ’80s cover is an occasional pathway to
success (but since Carey once was more or less a cheesy ’80s
artist herself, I’m bowing out of this line of critique on
condition of cognitive dissonance). Most sad, as my editor
has pointed out, is Mariah’s continued beef with Eminem. Her
“Obsessed” video even features an Eminem-like stalker following
her around. If you want the rest of the sordid details, Google
it; I feel 10 times less wise for having even contemplated
it. That stuff resides in a world that is no country for an
old man like me.
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