A Week With Jay-Z's "Kingdom Come": Day 1
24 November 2006
tell your friends...
Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
To have believed in the lasting retirement of Shawn Carter would be to believe in the retirements of Evander Holyfield and George Foreman. It would have been to believe that a unicorn developed a workable solution to eliminate this country’s dependence on foreign oil one afternoon and written the great American novel over the course of a month’s worth of evenings—something that would make A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man read like a bound ream of toilet paper stains—and not said a word. It was not going to last for very long. We would hear from Jay-Z again, almost as often as we still hear from 2-Pac and ODM though their mortal souls have been gone from us for years and years now. The babyfaced mogul is a 37-year-old man, but Kingdom Come shows that there’s always room for a crafty, cagey old man at the head of the table. He barely left us. He was gone for a time period that can typically be excused as a writing and producing period by most bands and artists. It’s acceptable to spend two years on a record. Cat Stevens goes 30 years between records. Boston—even in its monster ballad heyday—was likely to spend eight years between releases. Jay-Z was never going anywhere. Why would he say such a thing? It was a mean trick, but there’s a possibly that he wanted to retire, but all other members of the hip-hop community carrying the torch out there led him back into the squared circle. You get sick of watching the apprentices fuck shit up. You get sick of watching anyone in general doing a lackluster job and get the kind of notoriety that you worked your tail off to earn way back when. It’s why Phil Jacksons and Lou Pinellas come out of retirement. (It’s not why Evander Holyfield and George Foreman come out of retirement.) Jay-Z is just the latest person to prove that working in an office is woesome and spirit-breaking. He also raps, “Fame is the worst drug known to man,” and damn if that wasn’t the biggest catalyst for the hello again, I was simply joking with all of you return. He sings about the narcotic nature of Hollywood and glitz and being out under the brightest lights twice on Kingdom Come. He was without being a boardroom guy. It’s fairly obvious that his place is this place. It seems simple enough.
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