I’m starting to worry about Blueprint 3. Not because I think it’s going to be bad, but because I think it’s not going to be great. Let me stress that I do not think that Blueprint 3 will be a bad rap album. I actually don’t think Jay-Z can release a bad rap album. He is too smart and has too many resources. He knows what it takes to make the rap equivalent of a solid pop record. It will be enjoyable, pleasing to the ear, and have the occasional line you gotta rewind. I know Blueprint 3 will be a good album, which is precisely why I worry that it won’t be a great one.
I wish I could just sit down with Jay and play him his own solo debut, Reasonable Doubt. “Do you realize that you made this album? Do you understand that this is what you’re supposed to be living up to?” What Jay is doing is safe. He knows that if he puts Kanye and No I.D. and Timbaland and Pharrell and Rihanna and Drake on his album he’ll end up with a solid product. These are all talented people and they know how to do their jobs. The single, “Run This Town,” says it all. Jay-Z feat. Kanye and Rihanna over a Kanye beat. It’s more of a Kanye song than it is a Jigga song. And it’s not a bad song by any means, but if this album is going to be the classic we all know Jay is capable of making, this song would have to be the worst on the album (or maybe in the bottom 3 if everything other than those songs is straight fire).
I don’t blame Jay-Z at all. I’d probably do the same thing in his position. It’s just disappointing as a fan. He doesn’t seem hungry the way he did on Reasonable Doubt, on The Blueprint, and even on the The Black Album. In ’96, Jay was real REAL hungry, and he took a huge bite out of hip-hop. But when you try to take a huge bite, you risk choking, and it’s a little late in Jigga’s career to be choking, so I don’t begrudge him for hedging his bet with a formulaic album (that I will gladly bump on my stereo because, come on, it’s Hova). Jay might think he’s making a great album, but there’s no such thing as a formula for a classic. You have to break some new ground.
Which brings me to Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey. Morey is an incredibly intelligent stat-geek. He uses his analysis of statistics to construct what he and his team of statisticians believe to be the ideal championship squad. They look at what has worked for other title teams in the past and try to isolate the elements that lead to a championship run. In a sense, they are doing their best to recreate on purpose what many teams created unintentionally. That’s why I think that while Morey is the Rockets general manager they will consistently have solid teams that end up being better than they looked on paper, but not quite good enough to win a title.
Teams that win championships shouldn’t be able to predict how everyone on their team will be useful to them in the long run. That takes the magic out of it. Sure, Ainge thought he was making a move that turned the Celtics into contenders when he traded for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, but I don’t think he or anyone else could have foreseen the importance of James Posey and P.J. Brown to that squad. When everyone was talking about why the Lakers were going to win the title in ’09 I heard a lot about Bynum giving the team extra toughness, but there weren’t a lot of people saying Trevor Ariza would end the season as the 4th best player on a championship squad.
I mean, look at the Spurs. At the beginning of the season pretty much everyone involved in the NBA is thinking in the back of their minds, “ok, what random assortment of guys are the Spurs going to win with this year?” The Spurs definitely construct teams methodically, but the difference between the Spurs and the Rockets seems to be that the Spurs are putting together a real team as opposed to a collection of skill sets. The Rockets get a group of 12 guys and tell each of them “do what you do.” The Spurs find 9 guys to support their 3 stars and say “believe in our system, do what we do.” Since drafting Tim Duncan in 1997 the Spurs have won 4 NBA titles (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007) and each squad had a different look. Each team had a slightly different identity, the same way Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint, and The Black Album each had their own identities. Greatness means identities, not archetypes.
You won’t make a great rap album or assemble a great basketball team by trying to make a good one. You have to be aiming for greatness from the start. And part of aiming for greatness means abandoning the comfort of knowing exactly what you’re doing. You can’t reach the ceiling with both feet on the ground. You gotta jump to raise the bar.