His 2 words on “Lucifer” (see, see) aren’t enough to warrant “additional vocals by”. Kanye West picks up an “additional vocals by” shout-out on “Encore”, for which he provides part of the hook, a total of 100 words. It was not devoid of collaboration, or Roc-A-Fella lyrics. Despite being in charge of a record label that had 21 rostered artists at the time of the album, no rappers found their way on to the feature list. The Black Album: Jay-Z’s Most Insular Record The Highest Percentage of Self-Delivered Lyrics of any Hov album The collaborative spirit of Jay’s previous album, The Blueprint 2, on which he invited the most guests of his career (27, of which 10 were Roc-A-Fella artists) was cast aside in favour of a feature list stripped bare to match Jay’s pursuit of a truly autobiographical experience.

Roc-A-Fella’s in-house producer, left off Jay-Z’s retirement album? Jay was ruthless in pursuit of perfection. Pharrell remarks “ He’s not gonna do shit till he’s got a record with you”, to which Jay replies “If it’s done, and it’s hot? He’s just not gonna make it”. Jay was so intent on making a truly brilliant album it led to the above classic scene from 2004’s concert movie Fade to Black, in which Jay-Z is seen telling Just Blaze, who helped him craft the classic 2001 album The Blueprint, that Jay would leave him off the album if Blaze didn’t come up with a hot beat in time. Another narrative around the record, “12 tracks, 12 producers”, was abandoned to ensure the integrity of the project. This plan was quickly discarded (though it was re-upped and tweaked for 2017’s 4:44), though the commitment to the purity of the art and the message wasn’t lost. No cover art, no magazine ads, no commercials, nothing one day the album would just appear on the shelves and the buzz would build organically”. The Black Album, in Jay’s words (via autobiography Decoded), would drop with “absolutely no promotion. Blige was on Jay’s debut Reasonable Doubt, and no rapper was above either a Jay-Z collaboration or a Jay-Z beef. On that journey, he’d cultivated not only his own record label, Roc-A-Fella Records, but a list of collaborators and admirers of the highest echelon. In the lead up to Jay-Z’s final solo record, 2003’s The Black Album, no-one could or would deny the swathe he’d cut through the hip-hop landscape in 7 short years. I just felt like, it being the last album, that I wanted to do it by myself. For the first time ever, here are the numbers to cement the album’s legacy forever.

The Black Album was meant to be the climax of Jay’s career, a raw and personal record with minimal features. Fifteen years ago, Jay-Z announced that he was leaving hip-hop: but only on his own terms and with his own voice.

Jay z the black album cover