Following the release of “Magna Carta Holy Grail” Jay-Z unleashed a media craze, starting with a Twitter Q&A. He answered a sea of questions from Twitter followers who picked the his brain about his new effort.
“I actually had fun. That was amazing,” Jay-Z told Power 105’s The Breakfast Club of the Twitter Q&A. “That’s addictive. I can’t be on Twitter. It’s like weed. Too much of [it is] not good for me.”
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Jay-Z’s ‘Magna Carta’ Album Sales Forecast Grows to 450-500,000
Hov kept the conversation going on the airwaves, doing interviews with both Hot 97 and The Breakfast Club this week. He dished on “Magna Carta,” and name dropped Miley Cyrus and his student-turned-master, Kanye West.
Jay-Z sparked curiosity amongst fans when he ranked his most recent effort as his fourth best album on Twitter, putting it behind “Reasonable Doubt,” “The Blueprint,” and “The Black Album,” repectively.
“That’s the joint that took my whole life to make,” Jay-Z said of his ’96 debut. He went on to say the album’s ranking has less to do with the album and more to do with the state of mind he enters when making a new one.
Jay-Z, ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’: Track-By-Track Review
“Obviously you can’t bring those times back,” he said. “Just for it to be so high (the album) says what I think about it.”
The veteran MC also mentioned those “times” as times in rap music when legends like Notorious B.I.G., 2Pac, and Nas were leading a movement that wasn’t yet treated as a multi-billon-dollar business. With the rap game becoming a commidity, he said that the search for new jams has become harder to find.
“People were rapping because they loved to rap, and then it became this huge business,” he said. “So, people who didn’t even care to rap was like, ‘I need to figure out how to get some money in this,’ so you had people who would rap a little bit and saw it as a hustle.”
Even though innovators might be hard to come by in such a saturated business, Jay had encouraging words for Kanye West, and his most recent release, “Yeezus.”
“It’s polarizing. And that’s what great art is,” Jay-Z said, “It forces you to have an opinion. It’s needed.” He continued to say that the kind of experimentation West used in creating the album “pushes the genre forward.”
On Hot 97, Carter brings up another artist on the cusp of reinvention: Miley Cyrus, whom he references on his new track “Somewhereinamerica.”
“I like what she’s doing right now. She’s fearless,” he shared, “Just watching the situation, people want her to be something and she’s like, ‘I’m not that. I was six years old. You want me to be six years old forever?’ And this is her reaction to it. Maybe it’s loud, but it’s understandable.”
While fans highly anticipate a “Watch the Throne” sequel, Jay-Z says him and Kanye have yet to start the recording process.