Summary: Rapper and multimedia mogul Jay-Z just released his twelfth album, Magna Carta Holy Grail, and he still has a knack for flair — lyrically, musically, and promotionally. For the release, Jay-Z partnered with phone company Samsung, launched a star-studded television campaign and slowly leaked each song's lyrics. Jeff Rosenthal, hip hop writer and one half of the hip hop sketch comedy group It’s The Real, shares his thoughts on the record, which he reviewed for Billboard. Jeff Rosenthal, on his overall thoughts about Magna Carta Holy Grail: It’s an OK album. It’s not great, it’s not epic as he wants it to be, and it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever heard. But it is somewhere in this middle ground, which is where I think a lot of Jay-Z albums fall…. You listen to it because it’s a Jay-Z album. It’s an event. And that’s what makes it exciting. On “Holy Grail,” the song featuring Justin Timberlake that opens that album: It sounds like mall rap. It sounds like cool dad rap. It’s he and Justin sounding very much like a sequel to the Alicia Keys song “Empire State of Mind.” It’s very clean, it’s very radio ready, and it’s very much like if Jay-Z wasn’t there, then it would be Rick Ross on a yacht with his shirt wide open flailing in the wind. On Jay-Z's attempt to market the album as revolutionary: He has some interesting takes on fatherhood and he talks about the revolution of sorts — he’s trying to say that there are a lot of people that are not being heard the way they should be and are being abused by every single class system [and] political system. He doesn’t really dive in the way that, say, an artist like Kanye does. This is a guy who’s dipping his toe in, in a way to not really offend the sponsors but also not really seem too out of touch. Watch Samsung’s Magna Carta Holy Grail commercial:
