Jay-Z: is he really all that good? POLL
 

I just want to address this specific question which is why I didn't look for any old Jay-Z thread to resurrect. It'd also be good to have this as a poll.

The question is, is Jay-Z really a particularly good rapper? I wasn't listening to much rap at the time that he was at the top of his game, but I've since listened quite a bit to his entire discography and my overriding feeling is just a great sense of being underwhelmed. The actual delivery is not particularly impressive, and the rhymes/content are often just really poor, bland and cliched. I'd be half inclined to say that even somebody like 50 Cent was, at his best, considerably more talented as a wordsmith.

Where did Jay-Z get all his huge acclaim from?

I'm not totally clued up from head to toe on my knowledge, but I'm pretty sure his pairing with biggie smalls gained him some glory, then there's the whole rivalry with nas.

I have added a poll for you. If you want to tweak it, just PM me. From what I have heard I don't rate him at all. My son has got a couple of albums but they did nothing for me at all.

So just how DID this guy get so huge? It's one of the greatest mysteries of the mainstream as far as I'm concerned. With others, you can generally understand how it came to be that they got to where they are, whether you like them or despise them. But Jay-Z is just a baffling mystery if ever there was one.

Just to give an idea of how HUGE he is, for those who are not in the know: the Beatles have had 19 number one US albums. In a joint second place is Elvis Presley...

and...

yep, Jay-Z. And that's saying a whole lot.

You have a point, the amount of hits he's had doesn't really measure up properly to how popular he is, what with headlining festivals and his reputation. Collaborations go a long way i guess.

I'd imagine he got there because he's the most talented rapper that has been.

Argue all you want but rap has a way of forgetting you before your first album is done being poached of singles by the radio. You don't become a mainstream rap act with luck.

I was more alluding to clever marketing. Not luck. The former is nothing new. Tupac still sells records more than a decade after getting assassinated. He was never a skillful rapper (not compared to the creative standards of the time - Biggie, Nas etc.), and nobody with half a brain would claim that he was.

He did cover a song from the musical Annie, that's something lucrative right there.

I voted No. I don't really question his huge success because mainstream rap is a joke but I still don't understand why he has some sort of credible rapper aura about him that Kanye does.

Indeed, it almost seems like the guy's whole career has been built on lucrative pop-hop collaborations etc.

This is true, though the strange thing is that in the case of Kanye West, any actual fan of him with a shred of knowledge about MCing and wider rap generally seems to acknowledge that his musical skills do not really lie in the rhyming/rapping department. But when it comes to Jay-Z, people genuinely think he's all-round amazing - and for what?