A Week With Jay-Z's "Kingdom Come": Day 4
3 December 2006
tell your friends...
Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Shannon Palmer
For being someone who feels so young all of a sudden (the whole 30’s the new 20 thing, etc.) Jigga can’t shake the urge to pull out the death card as often as he can on Kingdom Come, even placing an allusion to the thought right there in the title. It’s everywhere on this record that boasts memorable one-liners throughout its length and four obviously superior tracks in “The Prelude” (as short and as introductory as it is), “Lost One,” “Do You Wanna Ride” and “30 Something,” but suffers with mediocre beats that are simply there, moving around very little, like a drown worm on a hook. Other than the first single “Show Me What You Got” — an average track will get cranked every time it pops on no matter its merits — Kingdom Come is rife with songs that won’t make many clubs hot and sweaty, at least not until they’re cut up, remixed and served fresh. The placement of the death on this record isn’t all that obvious. He seems to mean it as an out there sort of thing for others not himself — not the kind of dying in the streets (seen in the faux shootout scene in the Mark Romanek-directed “99 Problems” video) or drug deals gone bad kind of dying, but the dying that comes when the bony hand of the grim reaper is extended for you in good time. On the title track, it’s as if he’s making sure that his foes and possibly just those around him are comfortable about where their name is on that final list. Had they done everything? Had they not done the wrong things? It’s a making right with the decisive vote kind of song. A hook from another track goes: “Oh lord, I said I feeeeeeel, like I’m dyyyyyyyin.” That sounds like it’s coming too soon. All the talk of being satisfied with successes and efforts and being okay with past transgressions makes one curious as to how Jay would feel if this was the last thing he was remembered for. If it had to be his last, and the place he’d most like to be is popping loud out of the speakers of a dance club or climbing the charts like Peter Parker (as he aptly puts it), then this thing didn’t do the trick. There’s enough on Kingdom Come to make it so much more than a throwaway, but if this is all he’s got to offer as a “He’s baaaack!” statement, he must take us and the genre for fools.
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