Auto-Tune survives; Jay-Z might not

In the opening minutes of his new album, rap's biggest superstar sets himself a lofty goal: to resuscitate the genre that made him famous, to reel it back from the cliff edge of pop parody. He lays out his manifesto on the album's lead single, "Death of Auto-Tune," against a deliberately organic backdrop of clarinets and guitars: "This is anti-Auto-Tune / Death of the ringtone / This ain't for iTunes / This ain't for sing-along."

Bold stuff, then, especially coming from the man who almost single-handedly brought rap onto the pop charts. From some grimy underground emcees, lyrics like these would hardly sound unusual. But hearing the self-appointed Frank Sinatra of rap announcing that his new album "ain't for sing-along" is a whole different kettle of fish. This is major.

After all, this is the rapper who perfected - nay, personifies - the art of the crossover hit. If "Hard Knock Life," "Crazy in Love" and "Big Pimpin' " weren't sing-alongs, then what were they exactly? Put it another way: If a list had to be drawn up of the people responsible for the birth of ringtone rap, would anyone deny Jay-Z's place near the top? The man is married to Beyonce, for Christ's sake!

And yet there has always been more to Jay-Z than that: He's not just a pop star, nor is he just a rapper. What's made him so interesting (and so outlandishly successful) has been his ability to reinvent himself time and time again, blurring the lines between pop and rap when necessary and then aggressively redrawing them at a moment's notice. So, for every mainstream-baiting collaboration with Linkin Park or R. Kelly, we get an album self-consciously targeted at his critics, from the original "Blueprint," hailed by some (and not unreasonably) as the greatest rap album of the century, to 2007's Denzel Washington-inspired "American Gangster," which was another resounding critical success.

Not just anyone could come up with a rhyme as incisive as: "Don't believe everything your earlobe captures / it's mostly backwards / unless it happens to be / as accurate as me / and everything said in song you happen to see / then actually believe half of what you see / and with that said / I will kill niggas dead / Cut niggas short, give you wheels for legs." As a commentary on rap's morbid fascination with violence and hyperbole, it's second to none. In fact, coming from a man who's partly responsible for that fascination, it's positively ingenious.

Seen from a certain perspective, then, Jay-Z's career actually makes a lot of sense. It's not a headlong tailspin from street rapper to sellout, as many have claimed, but a cautious ballet between those two extremes. Until now, it seemed as if Jay-Z could really have it both ways, posing on billboards with Beyonce one day and rapping about his crack deals alongside a posse of hardcore rappers the next.

Sadly, on his new album, "The Blueprint 3," the emcee trips over himself in his desperation to please everyone. He may promise the death of ring-tone rap in the album's opening minutes, but the resulting record is more its coronation than its funeral: It's an album with a layer of pop gloss so thick you could swim in it.

And yet, while "The Blueprint 3" may catastrophically fail to rewrite the rules of hip-hop, that is far from a catastrophe. In fact, if one takes it as a pop album with a few moments of rather confused rapping dotted amidst the high-powered choruses, it makes for quite a satisfying listen. The reason is simple: Almost everything about the album is fine, except the name on the cover. No joke - "The Blueprint 3" should be applauded for succeeding despite its central figure.

Jay-Z's rapping on this record is, for want of a better word, boring. Not abysmal, certainly, but a real come-down following the lyrical triumphs of his last record, "American Gangster." Where that album threw out lines like "Blame Oliver North and Iran Contra / I ran contraband that they sponsored" once or twice a song, the best Jay-Z can come up with here is stuff like "I'm all covered in gold / like C3PO" - cue awkward laugh - or, more typically, puns like "niggas thought they was ill, found out they was ill" - cue painful cringe.

His cultural references, meanwhile, rarely stretch beyond the mundane, from dated celebrity baiting ("she shaved her hair like Britney") to lame product placement ("Blueprint's on my white iPod"). And apparently this music "ain't for iTunes?" Yeah, whatever.

Thankfully, Jay-Z is often eclipsed by the background music. It's an embarrassing state of affairs for a man who's so often crowned himself the best rapper alive, but on this album, it's something of a godsend. After all, Jay-Z is nothing if not rich, and on his new album he enlists the creme de la creme of contemporary rap producers to prop him up.

Kanye West laces a good six songs with his trademark blend of soulful hooks and shimmering synths, and on second single, "Run This Town," he even out-raps his one-time mentor, dropping a series of one-liners that make Jay sound like a humorless old crank. West may have an ego the size of the Chicago skyline, but with lines like "What you think I rap for / to push a fucking RAV4," he's almost earned it - the lyric may be the funniest recession slogan yet.

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Timbaland, another of Jay-Z's frequent collaborators, also turns in some solid work, concocting furious storms of electronic noise so loud they basically drown out the main attraction. That's certainly the case on "Off That," a raging hurricane of static that leaves Jay panting in pursuit and, not coincidentally, happens to be one of the album's highlights.

Of course, there are a few moments where the man himself shines. Alongside Young Jeezy on the feel-good anthem "Real As It Gets," Jay rediscovers his swagger, proclaiming himself "the audio equivalent of braille" with a ferocious nonchalance. It's one of the rare moments where you actually buy his braggadocio; a few songs later, when he declares himself better than Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones in one bar, it's impossible to suppress a snigger.

In short, Jay-Z appears clueless and out of touch on his new record, losing himself in an avalanche of self-contradictions. For over a decade, the rapper somehow sustained the illusion that he could be all things to all people - CEO and crack dealer, pop superstar and ghetto icon, buddies with Barack and gun-toting criminal. Sadly, on his new album, the facade begins to crack. I'll admit this is an easy potshot, but it sums up the whole thing pretty well: Isn't it a bit rich to include three auto-tune-heavy tracks on an album whose lead single is called "Death of Auto-Tune"?

Pros: Polished production work from some of the top figures in the rap industry, and an endless roster of guest appearances, with everyone from Rihanna to Alicia Keys popping in to keep the party going.

Cons: Weak, dreary and conflicted rapping from Jay-Z himself. He may declare the "death of auto-tune" in the album's lead single, but "The Blueprint 3" is anything but.

3 Paws

Download this: "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)," "Run This Town" (feat. Kanye West & Rihanna), "Real As It Gets" (feat. Young Jeezy)