It’s been a long time coming, 4 years in fact, but Jay Z is back with a fire album, and he’s here to tell his side of ‘the story’.
Although his last album Magna Carter Holy Grail was released back in 2013, we all know Jay Z never left the hip-hop game, and features on tracks with DJ Kaled and Drake proved just that. But, with fatherhood and other media friendly issues taking a huge part in Jay’s life, the rap mogul took a bit of a break and left eager fans waiting for his follow up to the sensational Magna Carter Holy Grail.
Wait no longer! Jay has dropped a 10 track album titled 4:44. We all know that Tidal is the world’s first, artist owned music streaming service, predominantly by Jay Z, and it came to nobody’s surprise that the album would be available to listen to on it. But it wasn’t easy. If you weren’t already a member of Tidal or Sprint before the week of the release (in the US) you couldn’t listen to the full album if you subscribed after.
If you subscribed after the date you’d receive a heart breaking message: “JAY-Z 4:44 is only accessible to Sprint/Tidal customers and all Tidal accounts established prior to June 26th during the exclusive period.”
This was confusing to fans and even other artists. Mark Ronson tweeted “I signed up for Tidal solely to listen to a Jay Z album, which turns out is the only thing I can’t listen to on Tidal” The Uptown Funk producer later found a way to listen and said “Tidal gripe aside. It’s pretty f**king incredible so far #444album.”
He wasn’t the only artist who found the accessibility to the album frustrating. Snoop Dog couldn’t listen to the album and admitted to downloading a bootleg version of 4:44. But he congratulated Jay on such a sick album. Tidal have now resolved the issue with new subscribers not being able to listen to the album
We’ve also had 4:44 on repeat. It’s so straight cut and raw, we almost forgot that Jay was, and still is, one of the best rappers ever; only because we haven’t heard a full album from him in so long. Jay talks about everything that we want to know about; cheating allegations made by wife Beyoncé in her last album Lemonade, fatherhood and his feud with old pal Kanye.
The legend also acquired some famous names for a few features on 4:44:
Beyoncé – Family Feud
Damien Marley – Bam
Frank Ocean – Caught Their Eyes
Gloria Carter (Jay Z’s mother) – Smile
Along with his 10 tracks, he also released a series of short films and an animation music video to his track ‘The Story of O.J’, which is based on African American stereotypes and dealing with the issues in the US. Jay- Z later said in an iHeart Raido Interview: “‘The Story of OJ’ is really a song about we as a culture, having a plan, how we’re gonna push this forward. We all make money, and then we all lose money, as artists especially. But how, when you have some type of success, to transform that into something bigger.”
Another video (exclusively on Tidal) expanding on the video and peoples personal stories behind stereotypes was released on Monday starring Jay-Z, Chris Rock and Kendrick Lamar and other creatives.
As you can only listen to the tracks on Tidal we suggest getting a free months subscription. Trust us, it’s worth it.
