billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 16, 2015

So remember when I was lamenting last week that the expected chaos after the collapse after a long-running #1 didn't happen? Turns out I should have just waited one week, because we might have one of the busiest weeks on the Hot 100 I've seen in a long time. Massive gains, sizeable losses and dropouts, a slew of new and returning tracks, and even new entries to the Hot 100 that show that even if the #1 slot might be safe, everything beneath it sure as hell isn't. And in some cases, that instability might end up being a good thing.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 3, 2015 (VIDEO)

Yep, I'm aware of the glitch in the top ten. Damn fader settings get me every time.

So in case you all know, I'm going to be going on vacation - but never fear, I'll still be posting as soon as I get a stable internet connection, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 3, 2015

Today is the first official week of 2015 for Billboard - which is a little odd, considering they start their year and it still is December, but this was the year where we both got the long-awaited finale of The Voice that notched six new hits. And while J. Cole managed to hold a little more momentum, unsurprisingly, most of this week belonged to Nicki Minaj, for better or for worse.

the top ten worst hit songs of 2014 (VIDEO)

First of our year-end lists, and sadly the one that will probably get the most traffic. Go figure.

Next up is the list of the best hit songs - stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2014

So, another year, another Billboard Year-End list, another assorted collection of hits and misses, and another year end list from me where I take a long hard look at the biggest charting songs of the year and pick out the best and worst.

Now for those of you who aren't familiar, let's go over the rules. A song can only make this list if it first landed on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End chart for 2014. There may be songs from last year that qualify - I can think of a few - but it needs to hit the list this year. And of course there were worse songs that I heard this year on albums that could easily outstrip huge chunks of this list - I'm not going to mention them, they don't deserve more attention - but I want to make the point that we're looking at the hits that got under my skin and annoyed or angered me. Songs that are just excruciatingly boring don't really make the cut here - 'boring' can be a factor, but there needs to be something aggressively wrong with the song to join this august company.

The other important thing to mention is that 2014 has, on average, been a stronger year than 2013, or at least more consistent. Up until the frantic reshuffling at the end of the year, this has been a pretty stodgy year with a few absolutely massive hits that wouldn't go away and prevented a lot of turnover. What this has meant is that many of the songs that have landed on this list don't inspire the same amount of real anger from me - of the majority I wouldn't say they are as deserving of vitriol as some of the really terrible tracks from last year.

That said, I think it's time for our dishonourable mentions!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 13, 2014 (VIDEO)

That went a lot easier than I expected - good to see.

Okay, next up I want to talk about Walk The Moon, which I should have time for thanks to Lil Wayne's repeated delays for his newest album. Until then, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 13, 2014

For this episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN, we have a much more chaotic week on the pop charts than last time. Roughly the same number of debuts and re-entries, but the real chaos was courtesy of a chart reshuffling, one that's fairly typical around this time of the year in order to usher out the old and bring in the new. This led to all sorts of strangeness, including our highest debut song from a movie that came out a few weeks ago from Academy Award winner and overall pretty awesome human being Jennifer Lawrence.

But before we get to that conversation, let's start with our top ten, where there was actually a bit of change. Not really in the top five - 'Blank Space' by Taylor Swift easily holds onto number one with even more radio airplay dominance, 'All About That Bass' by Meghan Trainor is barely holding on only thanks to radio airplay at #2, but even that's decreasing fast against the rise of 'Take Me To Church' by Hozier at #3, which is crushing streaming and slowly gaining traction on the radio. Coming it at number #4 is 'Shake It Off' by Taylor Swift, which is dropping across the board but isn't dropping as quickly as 'Animals' by Maroon 5, where they swap positions this week. 

It's in the next five where we get some real movement. Coming in at #6 is our highest arrival to the top 10, Selena Gomez's 'The Heart Wants What It Wants', arriving partially off the back of her first Greatest Hits album For You, which has gotten her huge streaming and respectable sales, and probably is Selena Gomez's best single since 2011 - I might not be a fan of the choppy piece at the end of the chorus and the lyrics that are a little clumsy with the fairytale references - but the more restrained production and Selena's performance reminds me of why I used to be a fan of hers until Stars Dance flushed all of that down the toilet. Next up is Sam Smith staying solid at 7 with 'I'm Not The Only One' thanks to gains across the board, and then we have our second new arrival at #8 with 'Uptown Funk!' from Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars, which simultaneously has been getting better and worse every time I listen to it. I love the bass, the slick guitar groove and punchy drums and yet the synth tones just feel off and that crescendo that leads into the sax just doesn't work as well as it should. The lyrics are swollen with arrogance, and yet Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson make them surprisingly convincing. I think I might have to deliberate on this one a little more, but thankfully I know exactly how I feel about the next two tracks. 'Habits (Stay High)' by Tove Lo tumbles to #9, having peaked at airplay despite respectable streams, and 'Love Me Harder' by Ariana Grande ft. The Weeknd slightly dips to #10 only because sales were slightly underweight, being held up by massive streaming and stronger airplay gains. Oh, and both songs are awesome, in case you need more reminders.

Now onto our big changes, and let's start with the major drop-outs: 'All Of Me' by John Legend, 'Bailando' by Enrique Iglesias, 'Boom Clap' by Charli XCX - although I expect to see it return with her album dropping in less than two weeks - 'Happy' by Pharrell, 'Sunshine And Whiskey' by Frankie Ballard, and 'Dirt' by Florida Georgia Line. Unsurprising, considering all of these songs had their twenty weeks or more last year and are getting shuffled out. And yet our losers this week are more songs that haven't caught on as strongly and are getting slowly rotated out at the end of 2014 regardless. Gwen Stefani's 'Baby Don't Lie' shows the No Doubt frontwoman's second comeback losing all steam to 97, Kendrick Lamar's odd attempt at a self-esteem anthem 'i' dropping to 80, the absolutely gutless 'Stolen Dance' by Milky Chance dropping to 51 and not leaving the chart fast enough, and the Chris Brown/Usher collaboration that gave Rick Ross his only real hit this year dropping to 48. But it wasn't just songs that wore out their welcome - Nicki Minaj and Skylar Grey's underwhelming debut from last week 'Bed Of Lies' drops to 81 although I suspect the second Nicki releases a video for it around her album's release it'll regain traction, 'Ghost' by Ella Henderson unfortunately loses steam to 67, Pentatonix's hot debut last week 'Mary Did You Know' drops to 60, and Carrie Underwood's finding Jesus and her inner Christina Aguliera on 'Something In The Water' dips to 52. Most perplexing to me was One Direction's 'Steal My Girl' dropping down to 45, propped up mostly by streaming. Eh, maybe the listeners finally clued in how much those opening piano chords are reminiscent of 'Faithfully' by Journey.

Now for our gainers, we've got a whole collection of songs I talked about last week gaining some major traction, whether we wanted them or not. I mean, I'm happy that 'I Don't Mind' by Usher and especially 'Night Changes' by One Direction went up to 54 and 31 respectively, but that's really the only changes I'm happy about. Elsewhere, 'Booty' by Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea goes to 75, 'I Bet My Life' by Imagine Dragons goes to 56, and because mainstream hip-hop has no real direction and has chosen to rely on the decision making skills of the Internet, 'Coco' by O.T. Genasis somehow rises to 38 entirely thanks to streaming. Okay, Internet, this was fun, we all had a good laugh, but I don't want a badly made trap song about cocaine to become the next big 'thing', alright? But thankfully we've got a couple better songs to round things out, some solid gains from 'Yellow Flicker Beat' from Lorde and Pitbull getting a boost thanks to his recent album for 'Fireball', which is one of the better songs from that release and features him channeling his inner Run-DMC.

We'll get back to Pitbull in a bit, but now it's time for our recurring entries!

I think I get why this song wasn't the Meghan Trainor song that caught fire - because it's kind of insufferable. Sure, the retro doo-wop vibe isn't bad and I like the key change, but maybe it's Trainor's self-satisfied delivery, the way she wants to get her own way, and the increasingly desperate way that she expects said future husband to accommodate her craziness and just buy her a ring already and even with that said future husband can count on not seeing his family more than hers. Normally the way these songs go is supplement the demands with what she brings to the table, and yet this song is too concerned with preserving its innocent nature to actually include the appropriate rhyme for 'I'll be sleeping on the left side of the bed / Open doors for me and you might get some... kisses'. Yeah, this is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, and as such I can't get mad at it, but I don't have to like it either.

Wow, this song should be a lot better than it is. To me Ne-Yo has always been stuck a half-step behind Usher, and it's a little amazing that a week after 'I Don't Mind' debuts on the charts, Ne-Yo is here with his own forgettable Juicy J verse. It's a shame that it's a fair bit worse, mostly thanks to the instrumentation, with the horn-sounding synthesizer obnoxiously blaring to start against the pitched-up vocal that sounds like a baby. Thankfully, the song does get a little smoother, and Ne-Yo is still a slick performer, but with a little less going on in the lyrics which aren't as smooth or detailed, it's just not as good, at least for me.

Oh, it's nice to see The Killers back with another hit from Battle Born... wait, this isn't The Killers? Okay, I'm just being snarky, but come on, from the U2-esque guitar flutter to the more chugging riffs, the lead singer belting at the top of his lungs with a voice that's somewhere between Brandon Flowers and Josh Ramsay, I'm a little inclined to brand Walk The Moon Killers-lite and move on. And even lyrically, it does fall into that mold - say what you will about all the real problems Battle Born had, at least The Killers cranked the lyrical subject matter into the broad strokes that worked with the bombast, whereas Walk The Moon isn't quite that ambitious. And yet, given this is the pop charts and there's no sign of another Killers album in the near future, and I did like that chiptune keyboard line on the bridge... eh, it works pretty damn well for what it is, it gets a pass.

Man, this song is underwhelming. I wasn't a fan of the last time Sia collaborated with Eminem on the deluxe edition of The Marshall Mathers LP 2, and her new collaboration for SHADY XV isn't much better. The verses are quite literally about how Eminem having writer's block and not being able to break out of his mold with production pulled straight from Recovery. It doesn't develop any real energy until he starts spitting on the second verse, but even that feels recycled. Granted, Eminem's not at his best is still above average, but I don't get why he's throwing money behind this when the title track or 'Vegas' were so much better.

Believe it or not, this was one of the few songs from Beyonce's self-titled album I liked, especially with the intro from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that actually did a lot for amping up the feminist themes that tried to underscore that album. This remix with Nicki Minaj aims to do a lot less - and unsurprisingly, it's a lot less listenable - and unsurprisingly, it charted a lot higher. At this point looking for any feminist subtext is pretty much pointless because Nicki Minaj makes it very clear with her verse that this song is about dissing other women who aren't as rich or bad as them. And you know what, fine, the song is more shallow brag rap that they tries to infuse with some populism and some raw power, especially with Nicki going off on her verse, I can give that a pass - if it wasn't for the production. Between the pitch-shifting, how everything is swallowed copious reverb especially the horns for no good reason, the chorus never gaining the dramatic swell, a complete lack of consistent momentum, the abuse of autotune, and the shrill grating synth over Nicki's final bars that just drops out and makes the song feel unfinished. I know I can't expect much from a remix, but I'd take the original any day over this.

And now that I've pissed off a considerable chunk of my audience, let's move onto our newest arrivals, starting with...

94. 'Time Of Our Lives' by Pitbull & Ne-Yo - I already talked a bit about this song when I reviewed Globalization last week, which is the reason this song is charting, but overall it's one of the more likable songs on this album. I still don't understand why Ne-Yo always sounds so inert on Pitbull's songs, but it fits a little better than on 'Give Me Everything' because the song is about ignoring real problems in your life in order to find a moment of solace in the party. And to Pitbull's credit, while his verses are as sleazy and ridiculous as ever, I liked how they stripped things back for the bridge where he actually showed a little weariness and sympathy for his audience and it's a surprisingly human moment. Combined with one of his more restrained beats, I'd argue the song works.

93. 'Sledgehammer' by Fifth Harmony - we're now at our second single from that long-delayed debut album from Fifth Harmony after 'Boss' failed to impress with one of the cheapest sounding horn sounds, an abuse of percussion and ridiculous assertions of dominance with some of the dumbest lyrics I've heard in a while. Thankfully, 'Sledgehammer' is a little better if only because it's bland over being ridiculous. Most of this is a factor of bottom-shelf Syco Records production that abuses percussion over everything else and that terrible pitch-shifted voice on the drum break in the chorus, but the girls doing a decent enough job selling the track and the lyrics aren't bad. But if 'Ghost' by Ella Henderson can't catch fire here, I don't see 'Sledgehammer' doing much better, and stealing a title from an iconic Peter Gabriel song doesn't help your case.

89. 'I See You' by Luke Bryan - of all the songs that showed up on this list, this is the one that surprises me the most. I mean, seriously, we're this desperate for Luke Bryan singles that we need to pull a deep cut from a year and a half ago? And it's not exactly a pleasant listen either - the guitar tone is sour, the pseudo-rap cadence Luke Bryan does not sound good with his lower voice, the backing vocals are pitched too high - but then again, this is a song that's intended to sound bitter and angry, an inability to get over being dumped and friends who are trying to help and it's not working. Believe me, we've all been there, but at the same time, the sourness isn't quite hitting the right note for me - it's more pissy than torn up or legitimately pissed, and it's written in a way that comes off as a little too young for Luke Bryan's older voice. Overall, not a bad song, but it could have been better.

84. 'I Walk The Line' by Craig Wayne Boyd - our Voice cover of the week is of one of Johnny Cash's more well-known hits, and I actually like this cover a fair bit, mostly because it's played in a slightly different way. Johnny Cash kept a rollicking tone that had a certain curt efficiency to it - Craig Wayne Boyd lowers the tempo, adds strings, and has a much more expressive delivery and presentation, and his rougher, incredibly powerful vocals and greater sincerity does a lot for his presentation. Traditionalists will probably think covering Cash is a travesty, but I like Boyd's interpretation - it works.

71. 'I Lived' by OneRepublic - I knew it was too good to last. I had hoped with 'Counting Stars' and 'Love Runs Out' that OneRepublic were taking their brand in a darker, rougher direction, and while you get some of that in the production texture of 'I Lived', this is very much in the vein of older, inoffensive OneRepublic singles that aren't bad, but are nothing special, especially in the lyrical department, which is standard 'you only live once' pablum that isn't all that interesting. Instrumentally, I like the punchier drums, but that's off-set by some backing vocals that don't quite work as well as they should, especially over the bridge. In other words, the song is fine, but nothing special.

65. 'Santa Tell Me' by Ariana Grande - I really shouldn't be surprised that Ariana Grande is releasing a Christmas song. Like her idol Mariah Carey's landmark Christmas song, it's pretty lightweight and basic in terms of production and composition, although the strings are pretty solid, but Ariana's lyrics are, well, more complicated. The story is Ariana reaching out to Santa - if he's really there - to have him confirm whether her new boyfriend is going to stick around into the new year so she knows it's okay to have sex with him. So let me reiterate, she's disrupting Santa's valuable time delivering presents all around the world to ask for sexual advice. And the tone of the song is all over the place too - the lyrics are written fairly straight, and yet Ariana's delivery is so girlish and when the full gospel choir comes in to sing the chorus about giving it all away... look, I don't think this song works, but on some level I want this to be huge like 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' because it is absolutely hysterical. Ho ho ho indeed...

18. '7/11' by Beyonce - no, not like that, I didn't mean 'ho ho ho' like...

Oh by the Nine Hells, am I the only one who remembers what music Beyonce used to make? I didn't love Beyonce's first decade or so of material, with Destiny's Child or solo, but in the past year her brand of songwriting has gotten dumber, sloppier, and nowhere near as dignified as it used to be. When a Rihanna/Shakira collaboration that played like a telenovela melodrama had more dignity and class than this, you've got problems. And it's not that I've got issues with Beyonce showing off more of her ignorant side for a dumb dance song for a deluxe reissue song that was clearly written in less time than it took for me to put together this episode - but Beyonce can make better music than this, because she's not that good at playing her ratchet side. She's got raw intensity on this track, but that's about it, because the beat is generic, reverb-swallowed trap with pitch-shifted vocals laid over the 808s, sloppy pitch correction, and only fragments of a good melody line that mostly come up on the end, and lyrics that alternate between overdone bragging and completely forgettable dance shouts. With this and 'Flawless', I don't get why Beyonce feels she needs to make this kind of music - nothing wrong with a good party song, but this doesn't even have the ambition of 'Flawless'. It's dumb, forgettable, and will likely be destined for the soundtrack of plenty of Worldstar videos. Next...

12. 'The Hanging Tree' by James Newton Howard ft. Jennifer Lawrence - okay, I'll be honest, the weekend when Mockingjay Part 1 was released, I went to go see Dear White People instead, which all of you should go out and see, by the way, because it's awesome and all the more relevant today. 'The Hanging Tree', cowritten by Suzanne Collins and the Lumineers, shows up in the movie as a dark little poem that obviously telegraphs parts of the plot, and musically is reminiscent of 'Hoist The Colors' in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. It's apparently a song that Jennifer Lawrence absolutely hated performing in any capacity and you can tell in her delivery, with her tempo increasing with each half-murmured line as she seems like she just wants to get it over with. But apparently audiences loved it and now it's charting across the world.

And while I don't see it becoming the next 'Let It Go' or lasting all that long on the charts, 'The Hanging Tree' is a decent enough song - at least when it stays a simple, dark, downbeat folk song. I liked when the chorus came in behind Lawrence, but the heavier classical instrumentation eventually swallows both with the more traditional symphonic choirs and horns made it hold a little less impact than it should. You could argue it's unintentionally reminiscent of the film's themes, swallowing the solitary voice of the figurehead into the heavier, blunter message of the cause that doesn't have the words, but I get the feeling that transition wasn't symbolically intentional for the music - and as such, it doesn't quite hit me the same way some similar instrumentation did. For a counterexample, do you all remember the unique flute melody or the mournful violin piece Howard Shore wrote for the hobbits and Rohan in Lord of the Rings? Those pieces worked so well because they didn't feel the need to drive the melodic motif into the ground by amping up the symphonic element, and some of the most powerful moments of the film are from those melodies being played simply, which carried so much more impact, at least for me.

But I'll rant about film scores another day. Overall, another mixed bag on this week of turmoil, and a little weaker than last week. For the worst, it's a toss-up between '7/11' and 'Flawless', one a remix that took a dump on the original and the other one that pretty much irredeemable from the start. For best... you know, it might be Killers-lite, but I'll take it, 'Shut Up And Dance' by Walk The Moon, with the runner up being either 'The Hanging Tree' or 'Time Of Our Lives', depending on my mood. Let's hope things improve next week.

video review: 'beyonce' by beyonce

Thought you'd pull a fast one on me, eh, Beyonce? Not to worry, I've got this.

Okay, next up will be Parmalee, I promise.

album review: 'beyonce' by beyonce

Imagine you're a music critic for a major publication. Imagine that you've reviewed well over a hundred albums throughout the course of the year and you've collaborated with your colleagues to post your list of the best albums of the year. Imagine your sighs of relief when the list goes live in early December and the irritated scoffs you make when the comments light up with complaints that you discounted some album or another. You think in the back of your mind, 'Hey, what do they know - I do this for a living, goddamn it, this list was hard to make, and we can't put everything on it!' You put the list in the back of your mind - because, hell, it's not like anyone's going to release any albums worth caring about in December, right?

Then imagine you get a call from your boss in the middle of the night just over a week later, screaming bloody murder because a press leak just revealed that a major pop star had decided to, without warning or promotion or even a lead single, drop an entire album onto iTunes. And this isn't just your run-of-the-mill major pop star, but one who is married to an all-star rapper and high-powered businessman who has enlisted some of the best producers worldwide for the album and who obviously is taking a big interest in his wife's success - and with no promotion, the only way the album will sell the numbers this pop star is used to is through the critical press. And considering this artist's last album was a critically acclaimed smash hit two years earlier, suddenly that year-end list of the top albums of the year looks a lot more shaky, doesn't it?

Now, I'm likely wrong here, but I can imagine the editorial teams for major outlets who already dropped their 'Best of...' lists panicking when they heard Beyonce had done exactly what I described, releasing a self-titled record to iTunes with no promotion or even a leading single. Fortunately, not having finalized my list yet, I did what any music critic does on a surprise release: put the album on repeat and work to take it in. Believe it or not, I actually was pleasantly surprised about this album - I'm no big fan of Beyonce, but her last album 4 was extremely strong, and she's working with some of the best names in the industry. So, how did Beyonce's BEYONCE turn out?

album review: 'magna carta holy grail' by jay-z

For those of you who don't follow the Billboard charts and industry news, let me inform you of a recent development that has led to some controversy on music forums. 

Namely, that Jay-Z executed a business deal with Samsung, with the company buying one million copies of the record in order to distribute them to Samsung customers through a downloadable app three days early. In terms of a marketing strategy, it's kind of brilliant, and exactly what you'd expect from Jay-Z, but it led to an interesting controversy, for Jay-Z argued that every sale should be counted through the RIAA charts, giving an instant platinum record before a single CD hit shelves or iTunes. Through this move, Jay-Z would have the sort of instantaneous sales boom that would immediately outstrip his frequent collaborator Justin Timberlake on the Billboard 200 charts, a number one platinum album that sold at a speed unprecedented since the late 90s boy band wars.

Given this completely unprecedented business move, the RIAA moved swiftly to respond - although not precisely the way one would expect. In order to accommodate Jay-Z's scheme, they made it clear in a recent press release that platinum records could indeed be issued before the 30 day evaluation period in order to reflect the changing digital sales climate. Billboard, on the other hand, wasn't nearly so gracious, already stating that Jay-Z's plan would not be permitted to impact the charts. But then again, this is Billboard, whose choice to include YouTube streaming in response to PSY's 'Gangnam Style' about six months too late led to the motherfucking Harlem Shake leaping to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and staying there for five goddamn weeks, so I have no illusions regarding their competence.

But all of that said, I really do admire the business logic behind Jay-Z's scheme here, and the win-win-win spirit in which it was designed. He gets another platinum record, potent sales gains, and a boatload of cash (he's releasing the album on his own label), while Samsung gets an exclusive ad campaign that can potentially rope in new subscribers eager to grab Jay-Z's newest hit, and Samsung customers get the album a couple days early and for a reduced price. To be honest, I think Jay-Z gets the best deal of the three, but that doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Unlike will.i.am, whose marketing strategy seems to be to annoy everyone attempting to hyperlink his name or get his album/songs to trend on Twitter, Jay-Z has enough business sense to utilize old school deals with modern delivery methods. If will.i.am is the 'marketing savant', Jay-Z is the Forbes-topping CEO.

And make no mistake, that's not just an appraisal of the man, but his music as well. Jay-Z may have started in the same pit of gangster rap as Nas (who he held an intense rivalry with for several years), but he always aimed higher, with a crisp professionalism that definitely makes him stand out among his peers. He's called himself the 'new Sinatra', and as treasonous as this might sound, I definitely buy it. Like Justin Timberlake, he has the same blend of class and respectability, and with the intelligence to recruit top-of-the-line producers and performers for his material. His frequent collaborations with Kanye West might not make much sense until you realize that Kanye's one of the best names in the game when it comes to production, and Jay-Z knows he can exploit that while lending Kanye some dignity and class the younger artist has always craved, to say nothing of friendship. And while I wasn't a big fan of their collaboration album Watch The Throne, I was definitely appreciative of the elements that worked and how Jay-Z was more on point than he's been in a long time. And this isn't even touching his relationship with Beyonce, one that makes all too much sense when you consider the thesis of both their respective discographies: 'I'm better than you in every single way'. 

So if I have so many good things to say about Jay-Z, why is that I haven't ever really been able to connect with his music? Well, as I said with Justin Timberlake, sheer unbridled arrogance can really put me off if it isn't delivered with the talent to back it up - and make no mistake, there are swathes of Jay-Z's discographies where he hasn't been trying as much as he could have. And while I will admit Jay-Z's refusal to deal with stupid people or incompetence is admirable (particularly the persistent rumors that he was responsible for sabotaging Chris Brown's career for 2009 and 2010 after the assault on Rihanna, who was one of Jay-Z's proteges), it would help Jay-Z's case more if he managed to keep some distance from the collaborators who can't exactly deliver at his level (the collaboration album and tour with R. Kelly spring to mind). 

But it's not just that. As I've said before, I like when artists delve deeper, actually go for some challenging material that might expose vulnerabilities or humanity in the respective artists. It's ultimately why Kanye West, despite all of the many, many problems I have with him, remains interesting enough to entice me to listen to anything to which he's attached. Jay-Z, on the other hand, always seems to be holding the audience at arms' length. He doesn't open up or reveal much about himself beyond the positive or shallowest of subjects. Sure, he'll talk about major issues and he tends to have a greater breadth of songwriting topics than most (as I've said before, the man is seriously smart), but I don't really feel like I know Jay-Z in the way I know other rappers. Sure, he's has personality and some foibles, but outside of that, it can be hard to relate to the problems of a man who is stupefyingly rich and married to Beyonce. And you can definitely tell that Jay-Z is forcibly creating this distance, which makes it hard for me to get past the mask, presuming there is one.

So what does this mean for his new album, the intriguingly-titled Magna Carta Holy Grail?