​L​ove, truth and honesty: has Jay-Z’s vulnerable new album ​changed hip-hop?
Meet JAY-Z – the rapper formerly known as Jay Z
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“Cry Jay-Z/ We know the pain is real/ But you can’t heal what you never reveal.” From his latest album 4:44, the stunningly forthright opening track Kill Jay-Z acts as a summary of the record’s themes. While he has always been acutely aware of his flaws (see: the song Lucifer), this is a huge step away from the braggadocio we expect from the hip-hop superstar. Opening an album with a first verse encouraging himself to cry is a fascinating change of pace. 4:44 mostly looks inwards as the fortysomething mogul takes stock of what’s valuable: moving from rapping about success and excess to focusing on his failings. In his own TED Talk-ready words: “It’s about killing off the ego, so we can have this conversation in a place of vulnerability and honesty.”
This introspection and humility can be attributed to his much-speculated upon (and seemingly confirmed) infidelity, which he discusses in length. Kill Jay-Z stands out for its loudness, threading the sample of a siren throughout, anchoring a familiar sound with a new message. Jay-Z makes a complete switch from the hyper-masculine womanising and hustling of Big Pimpin’ to the song 4:44; the former about splashing the cash, but definitely not on the women he sleeps with, and the latter being an apology for womanising (“I apologise to all the women whom I toyed with your emotions because I was emotionless,” he raps). Perhaps taking his cues from on-off pal Kanye West, whose bleak, massively influential 2008 masterpiece 808s & Heartbreak is often held up as a shifting in the sands for modern hip-hop, Jay-Z’s might be the one to take emotional rap fully mainstream.
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Conscious hip-hop not withstanding, cultural critic Ekow Eshun believes that for most of the genre’s existence it “has been a music in which artists have expressed strength and imperviousness to emotional insight and reflection”, but with the Black Lives Matter movement gaining momentum it became important to address the changing political climate. “There’s a brilliant sense that permeates [his work] that, despite winning, he is still potentially victim to his own insecurity,” Eshun says. “Wealth, status and fame still doesn’t protect him. Despite Jay-Z bragging about his watches, there are flashes of insight into not just how he wants to project himself, but how he’s really feeling.”
Hip-hop has always operated as a general expression of protest against systems thrust upon African Americans, and continues to do so today, albeit in a manner different than before. Novelist and journalist Dreda Say Mitchell says that “slavery and racism in the west resulted in black men being de-manned. The hyper-masculinity that is considered characteristic of some rap has been a cultural response to that legacy.” This extreme masculinity has been embedded in hip-hop since the 80s, specifically via so-called gangsta rap acts such as NWA and Mobb Deep. “Any black male artist who’s willing to take this subject on and examine it is to be applauded regardless of whether you agree with their views or not,” she adds.
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Open mic ... Jay-Z performs at the Bad Boy Reunion concert in New York, 2016. Photograph: MediaPunch/Rex/Shutterstock
So if gangsta rap was a response to black men losing their agency, then this current wave of hip-hop is a similar revolution, only this time in terms of rigid structures of masculinity. For Jay-Z, it is linked to the point he finds himself at in 2017. “It isn’t a surprise that [Jay-Z] is perceived to be more open about other aspects of his life,” thinks BBC 1Xtra presenter DJ Semtex.
The new generation of hip-hop artists, equipped with the emotional language of – wait for it – millennials (artists such as Danny Brown, Vince Staples and Earl Sweatshirt) have shown more raw emotion, candour and vulnerability than the scene has ever known. With Jay-Z, a V festival-headlining, proper mainstream household name, releasing an album like 4:44 the momentum of this movement could be solidified. “He’s grown up, turned tragedy to triumph,” adds Semtex. “Although now a father and husband, he is still the same Jay-Z. He has always been honest and open about his personal life; its just that they are now very different to what they were on 1999’s Vol. 3.”
For Eshun, this sense of art mirroring a new, more self-reflective life is a huge statement in itself. “[Hip-hop artists] have reached a point where they’re more comfortable and have realised that it’s braver and more masculine to acknowledge vulnerability.”