Album: Jay-Z - Kingdome Come

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Retirement? Never! Three years and more than a dozen patchy guest appearances later the self-proclaimed God MC returns with his awaited comeback album. One may think that this whole thing has been a grand marketing scheme several years in the making. Love him or hate him nobody has been able to knock the Brooklyn native’s hustle since his debut in 1996, now he is back with a slightly more matured attitude but still with the same confident swagger. You could say that the king is back to reclaim his throne.

While Just Blaze works his magic on the several of the album's tracks including Oh My God and the half-baked lead-single Show ‘Em What You Got (complete with utterly ridiculous video clip) you can’t help but feel that you are hearing production by the numbers, been there done that. One of the album's main highlights comes from the current golden boy of modern popular music Kanye West on the John Legend assisting Do You Wanna Ride where Jay gets mournful over a chopped up old school drum loop. The unlikely source of Coldplay’s Chris Martin provides the most surprising and refreshing track of the release with the tense and cinematic feel of Beach Chair, Hov is in his element here.

Dr. Dre showcases his evolving musical palette on tracks such as the moving Lost Ones and 30 Something. Jay even manages to make the absurd sound threatening and playful at the same time on the repetitive yet addictive Dr. Dre produced Trouble. The main mis-steps that hinder this release are the needless filler cuts, namely Hollywood which features Beyoncé, proving again that couples shouldn’t make music together. On the same note is the clunky Anything featuring the ubiquitous Pharrell and Usher, which ironically lacks anything that would engage the listener. The Hurricane Katrina serenade Minority Report featuring Ne-Yo is nothing new or original. Meanwhile Jay is embarrassing himself with his thinly veiled Dip Set and Damon Dash retaliations, he doesn’t need to stoop to that level.

At times Jigga sounds to be caught up in a pre mid-life crisis talking about his yachts and his smart casual attire of choice among other things. Although not musically, this release thematically is the logical progression from The Blueprint and The Black Album as Jay continues to intellectually grow and mature. If some of the fat was trimmed off and some of the accomplished smugness was held back slightly this could have been a classic album. What you are left with though is still an above average album. Just don’t expect it to win your Jay-Z hating friends over though.

Available through Def Jam