American Gangster

Chawn_T

metacritic

rollingstone

"This is black superhero music," Jay-Z proclaims in his excellent new "Roc Boys." That means live horns, grooving on some kind of Afro-beat riff over Seventies rumble-in-the-jungle funk, while Jay-Z tosses off boasts like "Pink rose, think O.J./I get away with murder when I sling 'ye." It might be the hottest song on Jay's new […]

pitchfork

Inspired by the Ridley Scott crime epic, Jay-Z's quickly-made drug kingpin record isn't as conceptually tight as he'd have liked, but it rips Jay out of the royal materialistic old-man haze that ruined Kingdom Come and recalls the titanic, invincible snarl that made him great in the first place.