Justify My Thug:

Jay Z brings the same energy he brought to ‘Threat’ on ‘Justify My Thug’.

The producer of the track, DJ Quik, said in an interview that Jay took the beat and rapped over it all in one take.

“I banged out three, four beats, he was, ‘Eh, eh, eh, I like that one right there.’ So from that point, we stemmed out the track, Guru put a nice rough mix on it ...”

“... Jay got up, walked in the booth, cocked his fucking Nike fitted to the left, I think it was. And just belted that motherfucker out. Who does that? One take with no paper? Who does that shit? He’s a rock star, man, a fucking rock star.”

Lucifer:

‘Lucifer’ is one of many high points on the album.

As the title of the track implies, the song is full of biblical references which happened to be very fitting as Jay’s protégé and producer of the track, Kanye West, went on to release the hit single, Jesus Walks, the following year included in his solo album, The College Dropout.

Kanye played a vital role in the instrumentation for many of Jay’s albums including songs off The Blueprint, The Blueprint 2 and The Black Album.

This led to him getting a shoutout by Jay on this track.

Allure:

In 2012, whilst performing the song live, Jay said that ‘Allure’ was his favorite Jay Z song.

Jay reminisces on dealing, hustling and his youth as he raps in the opening line of the song “The allure of breaking the law”.

Whether you’ve lived in his circumstances or not the song feels strangely nostalgic of a time that, for most people, probably didn’t exist.

It’s not hard to see why this is Hov’s favorite song.

My 1st Song:

The closing track of this incredible album couldn’t be better.

Hov uses a ‘Reasonable-Doubt-era’ flow to close off his career. Conceptually, the song is derived from the Biggie interlude at the start of the track. Hov recording the song from the perspective of it being his first.

“That’s actually the last song on the album, but it’s really the first song. It’s about having the same focus throughout your whole career, about me treating my first song like my last and my last song like my first.”

Thank you for reading this thread. It took days to put together so retweets would be highly appreciated. Hopefully this gives you a new perspective/consideration for the album.