Wiki
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Release Date
1 January 2009
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Length
15 tracks
The Blueprint 3 is the eleventh studio album by American rapper Jay-Z, released September 8, 2009, on Roc Nation. It is the final installment in The Blueprint trilogy, preceded by The Blueprint and The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse. Production for the album took place during 2008 to 2009 at several recording studios and was handled by Kanye West, The Neptunes, Jeff Bhasker, Al Shux, Jermone Harmon, No I.D., The Inkredibles, Swizz Beatz, and Timbaland.
The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 476,000 copies in its first week. It became Jay-Z's eleventh US number-one album, breaking the record he had previously shared with Elvis Presley, and produced five singles that achieved chart success. Upon its release, The Blueprint 3 received generally mixed to positive reviews from music critics. Rolling Stone named it the fourth best album of 2009.
The earliest hype over The Blueprint 3 came when DJ Clue released in January 2008 a mixtape song called "Ain't I", produced by Timbaland. In the intro, Clue says, "Off that Blueprint 3 baby!" However, a spokesperson for Jay-Z said that it was an old, unreleased song and that the recording of The Blueprint 3 had not yet started. On July 20, Timbaland, a frequent contributor to previous Jay-Z albums, told MTV News that he would be producing the whole album. But in an interview with the Rolling Stone magazine, Jay-Z called the statement "premature". In July 2009, Jay-Z confirmed The Blueprint 3 as the album's title during an interview with radio station Shade 45.
By November 2008, he had finished the album but with lengthy negotiations with Def Jam, he went onto reworking it. In January 2009, Jay-Z confirmed continued production of the album and admitted the leak of several songs. In a Billboard magazine interview, Jay-Z confirmed "What We Talkin' About", the album's intro, "Thank You", and "Already Home" as song names and collaborations with Australian dance group Empire of the Sun, rappers Drake and Kid Cudi and singer Rihanna. He also mentioned in an interview with DJ Semtex that his favorite song on the album is "Empire State of Mind". The official tracklist for Blueprint 3 was revealed on August 18, confirming the guest appearances from Drake, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, Kid Cudi, Young Jeezy, J. Cole, and more.
The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart with first-week sales of 476,000 copies. It serves as the third-highest first-week sales of 2009. It became Jay-Z's eleventh US number-one album, breaking the record he had previously shared with Elvis Presley. In its second week, it remained at number 1, selling another 301,000 units, before dropping to second in its third week. After four weeks sales totaled 1,104,000 units. In the album's fifth week it sold 75,000 copies bringing the total to 1,178,000 it is Jay-Z's 11th solo album to go Platinum. The album in its fifth week is also number 5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. In its sixth week the album rose up 2 spots to number 3 on the Billboard 200, despite selling 65,000 copies, 10,000 less than its previous week. 53,000 copies were sold in the US in its seventh week, putting it at number 4 on the charts. In week eight the album sold 51,000 copies. In the next week album sold 48,000 units. In next three weeks album sold over 100,000 copies and its current sales in the U.S. is over 1,700,000 units as of May 2010. having sold 1,748,000 copies and being Jay-Z's first album to have 3 Hot 100 Top 10 Hits.
The album was the 9th best selling album of 2009 in the U.S., selling over 1.52 million copies in 4 months, the album is now at over 1.86 million sold and still in the Top 30. The Blueprint 3 is the second highest selling hip-hop album of 2009 domestically. Despite being released in 2009, the album was the 7th highest selling Rap Album of 2010 with sales of over 266.000 copies.
The album has sold 1,748,000 copies. It was the 5th Highest selling Rap Album of 2010 according to Billboard.
The Blueprint 3 received mixed to positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 65, based on 22 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". In his consumer guide for MSN Music, critic Robert Christgau called the album "fairly superb" and gave it an A- rating, indicating "the kind of garden-variety good record that is the great luxury of musical micromarketing and overproduction". Allmusic writer John Bush gave it four out of five stars and compared the album to its predecessors, describing it as "somewhere between the two, closer to the vitality and energy of the original but not without the crossover bids and guest features of the latter (albeit much better this time)". Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly commented that the album succeeds at its goal of "reaching maximum commercial blast radius while maintaining its street bona fides". Steve Jones of USA Today praised Jay-Z's lyricism and wrote that he "shows that for someone who is measured mostly against himself, lyrical dexterity doesn't have an expiration date". The Daily Telegraph gave the album four out of five stars and complimented its modern sound. The A.V. Club gave it a B+ rating and stated "Jay-Z sounds liberated by his legacy rather than weighed down by expectations".
However, Slant Magazine's William McBee found The Blueprint 3 "predictable" and "complacent", stating "The album is a hip-hop feast, for sure, filled to the brim with elite production and elite rapping, but it lacks the hungriness, the spirit, and the craziness that marks a classic album". Alexis Petridis of The Guardian gave the album three out of five stars and wrote that it "peters out in a mass of indistinct tracks" following its first four songs. Andrew Martin of PopMatters gave it a five out of 10 rating and viewed its second half as weak, stating "Jigga has the ability to push the envelope and make fantastic music. But on here, he has clearly reached an impasse of how to execute that perfectly". Pitchfork Media's Ian Cohen commented that it is "so certainly Jay-Z's weakest solo album, you'll be tempted to wonder if Kingdom Come was somehow underrated". The Washington Post's Chris Richards gave the album a negative review and criticized its lyrical content, "pairing bromidic couplets with swatches of keyboard piffle". In his review for the Los Angeles Times, critic Greg Kot gave the album two-and-a-half out of four stars and viewed Jay-Z's celebrity and older age as somewhat of a flaw, stating:
It's tough for hip-hop stars to age well. Once they become celebrities living in mansions and starring in family movies, street cred is usually the first thing to go. Just ask Ice Cube. Longevity just wasn't built into the hip-hop lifestyle, with its premium on youthful swagger, street tales and fast turnover 'The Blueprint 3' aims to show everyone he still has wicked skills on the mike. It does, even as it illustrates that sometimes he coasts on his celebrity The message: Don't mess with ol' Gray-Z. Charles Aaron of Spin criticized the album's production and commented that "it's got its highs and lows". Rolling Stone's Jody Rosen called it "a catchy, pop-friendly record", but viewed that it lacks the "electric charge" of Jay-Z's previous albums and that he is "stuck for a subject But he says it well". Stephen Dalton of The Times gave the album three out of five stars and called it "no great milestone, but far from the predicted disaster." Despite noting inconsistency in Jay-Z's rapping, Jon Caramanica of The New York Times complimented the album's varied musical elements and called it "an unexpected blend of maturity and youth". Pete Cashmore of NME gave it an eight out of 10 rating and wrote that it "delivers because of hefty beats and quality rapsmanship, nothing else. And, ultimately, that’ll do just fine". Kiilian Fox of The Observer commented that Jay-Z is "maturing into a responsible elder statesman". Zach Baron of The Village Voice viewed that "much of Blueprint 3 is about the weird, meta-rap work of redefining what it is to be a boss" and stated "Jay-Z's midlife crisis is over. Which doesn't make The Blueprint 3 a classic. But we'll take it. For now".
The Blueprint 3 was ranked the best album of the year by Billboard, and seventh best album of the year by MTV. Rolling Stone named it the fourth best album of 2009 in its year-end list.
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