And on “So You’ll Understand,” Hov’s “And in my mind I really want you to be my wife forever” sound more desperate than it does sincere. Jay’s “We doin’ real good, we don’t miss you now” is as bitter as you might imagine, but it isn’t quite convincing. There's also album closer “Where Have You Been?,” where Jay and Beans take their fathers to task. Scarface's cut isn't The Dynasty's only moment of dead-eyed realism. So to hear him walking through an unqualified tragedy, one that no involved parties deserved by any measure, is heartbreaking like few passages in music. The engine of Face’s music has always been an intimate understanding of right and wrong, even when those moral codes were at odds with his own life. Face's verse recounts the process of writing the song: he planned to write about his own tribulations, but he was derailed by the news that one of his friends had lost his child and decides his friend’s story is the one worth telling. ("I tracked the beat and I got to meet Jay-Z, and he said, 'Oh you a real soulful dude.'") In addition to a game-changing Kanye production, “This Can’t Be Life” features one of Beanie Sigel’s most affecting verses (“Shit, I know that I’mma see ‘em when I leave, dawg”) and a Scarface at his most tear-jerkingly honest. On "Last Call," the outro of Kanye West's debut album The College Dropout, the Chicago rapper/producer talks about catching his break with “This Can’t Be Life,” the Harold Melvin-sampling beat that served as his introduction at Roc-A-Fella. LOSE.,” a mantra that would figure prominently into his battle with Nas, you believe it.
But when he wraps up with the defiant “I. 3 (“Fourth album, still Jay, still spittin’ that real shit”). “Change the Game" lent shine to longtime protégé Memphis Bleek, Philadelphia street rap savant Beanie Sigel, and the late Static Major, who would later star posthumously on Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop.” Jay opens and closes the song, complete with lyrics that may or may not have been holdovers from Vol. The opening three-song run posits Jay as one of the biggest rappers in the world-neither DMX nor Juvenile could wrestle the spotlight back. Carter and The Blueprint, the kind retirement gave to The Black Album.īut on The Dynasty, Jay was still just a crook with a record deal, taunting middle America with oversized throwback jerseys and formidable Soundscan numbers. It gives the album high stakes, the kind that lawyers gave to Vol. It’s anthemic, and flexible, the kind of song you can play before a basketball game or a drug test. The Dynasty's "Intro” is one of Jay’s most virtuosic performances: he doesn’t start rapping til a minute and a half in, but when he does, he’s Stevie Wonder with beads under the doo-rag, with a darkened liver and spotty scripture knowledge.
But The Dynasty is an engrossing record, a snapshot of Jay at his creative peak, before Bush, before he cribbed the whisper from Young Chris, and it’s time for it to receive the attention it deserves.
It should have been an afterthought, and to many critics, it would be, dwarfed when Jay smartened up, chopped up soul, and bared his own on The Blueprint a year later.