Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail hit stores yesterday after hitting Samsung phones last week on July 4. Now that the album has been out for long enough to give it a few spins, the reviews for the album have poured in. And for the most part, they're all kinda meh about the Brooklyn rapper's latest album. The reviews have all sorts of complains but the most common is that it doesn't compare to Kanye West's Yeezus which dropped last month and that Jay is just doing his typical rich guy rapping without much substance. Although the reviews don't seem to bother Jay, we can't help but browse them all to reach some kind of critical consensus. So read through 20 reviews and pulled some highlights.
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RELATED: Between the Lines: A Track by Track Breakdown of Jay-Z's "Magna Carta Holy Grail"
Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail hit stores yesterday after hitting Samsung phones last week on July 4. Now that the album has been out for long enough to give it a few spins, the reviews for the album have poured in. And for the most part, they're all kinda meh about the Brooklyn rapper's latest album. The reviews have all sorts of complains but the most common is that it doesn't compare to Kanye West's Yeezus which dropped last month and that Jay is just doing his typical rich guy rapping without much substance. Although the reviews don't seem to bother Jay, we can't help but browse them all to reach some kind of critical consensus. So read through 20 reviews and pulled some highlights.
RELATED: The Best Tweets From Jay-Z's Extended Twitter Q&A
RELATED: Ranking Jay-Z's Albums From Worst To Best
RELATED: Between the Lines: A Track by Track Breakdown of Jay-Z's "Magna Carta Holy Grail"
The Daily Beast
"In fact, the bulk of Magna Carta, which was mainly produced by Timbaland, feels overproduced. Timbaland's beats-and they are very catchy beats-have been so strident and transformable that they've overwhelmed Jay-Z's lyricism in the past, as on Obama fav "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" off The Black Album. Here, the 43-year-old rapper really struggles to keep up." — Marlow Stern
A.V. Club
"Jay-Z's interest in art is, like so much of Magna Carta, nakedly superficial. In one of the record's cockiest lines, on the blustery, obliviously goofy "Picasso Baby," the rapper spots his daughter near one priceless piece and tells her, "Go 'head and lean on that shit, Blue / You own it." Like everything in Jay-Z's world, art is a replaceable commodity. Its value lies merely in the fact that it has value." — Evan Rytlewski
Variety
"The best that can be said of "Magna Carta" is that much of this strain seems to have eased. The Jay that emerges on the album is calm, relaxed, imperious, an expert curator with no shortage of nice things to display." — Andrew Barker
Fact Mag
"'Crown' could even be a Yeezus parody, with distorted 808 kick drums, an autotuned breakdown and ominous, repeated samples, but where tracks like 'New Slaves' and 'On Sight' used those effects to jar their audience, 'Crown' simply melts down into beige slurry." - Tom Lea
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Business Insider
"But there's one major problem with Jay's "new rules." Remove the pre-release bells and whistles, take the music in a vacuum and you'll discover the following – despite a promising start, Magna Carta Holy Grail may just be the most uninspiring, plodding album of Jay-Z's career." - Kevin Brown
Slant
"Jay-Z is at his best when he's engaged, as the moments of vulnerability and mortality contemplation on the latest Blueprint revealed. The only engagement on Magna Carta...Holy Grail is with the tedious chore of legacy-building, and as a consequence of the prevailing idea that the size and spectacle of the album will speak for themselves, Jay proves less of a presence than ever, and his rapping is lifeless and anemic enough to skirt self-parody. Contrast this with the wrenchingly immediate Yeezus, so forceful and vivid despite its flaws. Both albums flirt with the idea of self-deification, and while Kanye leans more toward the Greco-Roman conception of a god (petty, fickle, and fascinatingly flawed), Jay-Z strives for something closer to the New Testament tradition, detached to the point of potential nonexistence." - Jesse Cataldo
Idolater
"What's disappointing then, especially given the unprecedented nature of its release, is that it doesn't require closer listens or rewinds. In his attempts to spell out everything (see "I had luggage, meaning I had baggage," in "Heaven," for instance)" - Christina Lee
HipHopDX
"Unlike Timbaland's subpar contributions on The Blueprint 3, Timbo completely avoids "Timbaland-isms" that would otherwise make a cut sound like "Jay-Z on a Timbaland track" rather than just a Jay-Z track. Whether it's the Soul-Rock intro that is "Holy Grail" or "F.U.T.W.," which sounds like it would be right at home following up "So Ghetto" on Vol. 3, Timbaland hits the right notes time and again on this one." — Roman Cooper
The Washington Post
"Throughout "Magna Carta," the 43-year-old pretends he's a threat to a system he's so eagerly become a part of, as if his life as a champion capitalist is some perpetually escalating act of subversion. Hooray? Rooting for this man in 2013 is like rooting for Pfizer. Or PepsiCo. Or PRISM." - Chris Richards
Pitchfork
"The money isn't totally wasted, as these are some of the stranger beats Jay's rapped over in some time. Witness the contorted, metallic pings of "Tom Ford", "Somewhereinamerica"'s drunken ragtime horns, or the codeine-laced, dubby "Crown". Jay is at least trying to interact with a hip-hop mainstream that has evolved a great deal since his last true solo album, though relegating the production of reigning MVP Mike Will Made It to a one-minute interlude ("Beach Is Better") smacks of unintended elitism." - Ian Cohen
The Los Angeles Times
"Other than to amaze us with his opulence, good fortune and undeniable skills, the answer is elusive. Despite its name, "Magna Carta Holy Grail" seems unconcerned with delving too deeply into either the democracy or the faith that the two objects symbolize." - Randall Roberts
Vulture
"Magna Carta ... Holy Grail is not a great Jay-Z album. It's a solid record, bolstered by luxury-grade beats (Timbaland, Pharrell, Boi-1da), by a sprinkling of good songs and a couple of great ones. It's too long; it often feels glib. It includes dopey interpolations of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Losing My Religion," and some embarrassing lyrics about modern art. Unlike the season's other big rap release, Kanye's Yeezus, it's not an important record, not an event album, though Jay clearly wants it to be." - Jody Rosen
Billboard
"It's in the same vein as "Watch The Throne," where there's much talk of revolution, of race and class, but - while they championed Occupy Wall Street in Occupy All Streets shirts - now, these words have been co-opted by a giant phone company. Jay's trying to be a lot of things to all people, as one does when as big as he is. And while it's unfair to measure Jay against others, we're living in a world where Yeezus has risen, and it feels like Jay's dipping a toe rather than fully diving in." - Jeff Rosenthal
SPIN
"If Yeezus is the sum total of one man's impossible dreams and unavoidable flaws, then MCHG aims to be the embodiment of man's collective best intentions: social mobility. Personal betterment. Generational advancement. Familial love. And a healthy amount of faith." — Chris Martins
Baltimore City Paper
"If Timbaland is just a little off his game, Jay-Z is a little further from operating at peak capacity. As a vocalist, and as a technician, Jay-Z has been on the decline for a long time, with a weaker, whinier delivery and less precise rhythms. Sometimes he even seems to fall off the beat at the unfortunate moment that he's bragging about his masterful flow, as he does on "Tom Ford" and as he did a few years ago on the remix of Young Jeezy's "Put On."" - Al Shipley
XXL
"He may be coming to grips with the fact that there are limits to what you can do at the top, as his clash with Billboard regarding his Samsung deal showed, but that doesn't stop him-lyrically, promotionally, or otherwise-from trying to push the boundaries out a little further." - Dan Rys
The New York Times
"But Jay-Z is still striving on "Magna Carta ... Holy Grail." He ponders faith, superstition and free thinking in "Heaven," which quotes R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion," while in "Nickels and Dimes," he wonders whether giving people handouts is just his way to assuage "survivor's guilt" over his escape from poverty. The songs aren't cocky or neatly resolved; they're Jay-Z thinking aloud, grappling with complications that can't be resolved with cash." - Jon Pareles
The Independent (UK)
"But at least he deals the boasts out with some panache - one of the funnier aspects of the album is hearing Rick Ross trying to do the jet-set brag thing, and still sounding like a hired doorman." - Andy Gill
NPR
"Taken linearly, ["Picasso Baby" is] a mess of ego. But comprehensively, it's all insatiable radiant child cubism - poignant signifiers of ghetto brashness juxtaposed with impressionistic images of intergenerational wealth creating the collage of an identity that's yearning to be accepted, but unwilling to be acceptable." - kris ex
Matt Druge
Jay Z #MagnaCarta filled with ENDLESS 'niggas' and hate trash talk. Beyonce approve of this madness? Meanwhile, burning all my Tom Ford.
— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) July 9, 2013
