Why Jay-Z's 'The Blueprint' Is Better Than 'Reasonable Doubt'

The first thing to consider is the context into which each record was released. What was happening in Shawn Carter’s life at the time? First, let’s consider where Jay-Z was personally and professionally in 1996.

RD was not only Jay’s first album, it was also his last chance. It’s well known that he was clapping them flamers before he became famous, but people forget that Jay had been kicking around in the rap game since 1986. If RD didn’t work out, his music career might have ended right then and there. Those lyrics might have sounded cool and collected, but behind his icy bravado was a sense of desperation.

Having watched Nas and The Notorious B.I.G. shoot to stardom, Jay was still scratching on the block—as he admitted on “This Can’t Be Life”—thinking, "Damn, I'ma be a failure."

It's not like Jay-Z got all those beats and guest artists because everyone was checking for him at the time. Hov was blatantly bogarting the scene, emulating Nas and Big, and using his own capital to make himself seem like their peer.
Rejected by every record label, he and Dame started their own. In many ways RD was Jay-Z buying his way into the game, a fact that he would reference on “U Don’t Know” from TBP: “I came into this motherfucker a hundred grand strong.” It's not like he got all those beats and guest artists because everyone was checking for him at the time. Hov was blatantly bogarting the scene, emulating Nas and Big, and using his own capital to make himself seem like their peer.

The context surrounding TBP couldn’t have been more different. Jay-Z was coming off The Dynasty—his fourth straight platinum album. Over the preceding two years, he had dropped five Top 40 hits. Most of the dominant rappers from the RD era—2Pac, Snoop, Biggie, The Fugees, Wu-Tang, Mobb Deep, even Nas—had either lost it or were no longer alive. It would be fair to say that as he recorded TBP Jigga was both the King of New York, and of rap in general.

As his run started to enter unprecedented territory, Jay began to raise his competitors’ ire—particularly in New York. On random mixtapes, Prodigy rambled about, “Nah, we ain’t the Roc...we ain’t them f*****s.”

Nas quietly stewed over Jay’s clandestine relationship with Carmen, the Queens rapper’s baby’s mother, and fired not-so-subliminal shots back and forth with Memphis Bleek. Rumors of a night club run-in with Fat Joe’s Terror Squad, and of a champagne-bottle clubbing of Jay, ran rampant in NYC. Jay was also awaiting two criminal trials, one for gun possession, and another for assault.

By the time you reach album number six, and you are teetering on the precipice of pop music, it’s infinitely more difficult to muster the honesty to articulate your successes and failures with equally measured candor.

Besieged in his hometown, Jay absconded to Miami during Memorial Day of 2001 with beat CDs from Kanye West and Bink. Over that long weekend Hova found the clarity to communicate his unique position, and the songs just started flowing. In little more than a week he’d completed the lion’s share of the LP, drenched in soul and wrought with deep introspection. He came back to New York and tied up the loose ends, including several clutch tracks from Just Blaze, but “Izzo” was already in constant rotation on HOT 97 by mid June.

If hip-hop history has taught us anything, it’s that it is much harder to make a great follow-up than it is to make a hot debut. On your first album you have an entire lifetime’s worth of experiences to reflect on, plus you have the advantage of anonymity, the element of surprise. But by the time you reach album number six, and you're teetering on the precipice of pop music, it’s infinitely more difficult to muster the honesty to articulate your successes and failures with equally measured candor.

How many rappers can you name who had landmark debuts that they could never quite match? (In case you need a reminder, peep this list). One month after TBP dropped, DMX—who was at least as popular if not more so than Jay in 1998—had already peaked, releasing the first of several underwhelming efforts, The Great Depression. That’s why we’ll always be more impressed with what Jay-Z accomplished on The Blueprint.

The second thing to consider is the musical context at the time of the record’s release. What was happening in rap at the time? In terms of hip-hop’s stylistic evolution, TBP trumps RD because one was just following the current trends while the other showed true leadership.

In 1996, the whole Mafioso rap thing had already been done in NY. Raekwon and Ghostface Killah had presented themselves as Cristal-sipping dons a year prior on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..... AZ followed suit on his 1995 debut, Doe Or Die—around the same time Nas was calling himself Escobar and Biggie was bringing out his crew, Junior M.A.F.I.A. Mafioso rap was already established enough to incur a backlash on The Fugees’ The Score, which dropped four months before RD (check the “Red Intro,” where the Refugee Camp can be heard clowning people who call themselves “Gambino”).

Although Reasonable Doubt’s lyrical content and production were both outstanding from a technical point of view, they were based on trends that were already popular at the time. By contrast, The Blueprint lived up to its title, creating a new model for the 21st century rap album. That model was based on a new era of producers who delivered a new sound that inspired a new variety of lyrical themes (ranging from personal narratives to radio bangers to mogul anthems).

Of course Jay-Z’s long-simmering battle with Nas provided important inspiration at the time. But as much as the Nas battle tends to dominate conversation about The Blueprint, it’s somewhat beside the point when evaluating the album’s lasting quality. Only one of the album’s 13 tracks gets at him directly (“Takeover”) and Nas had yet to drop “Ether” and Stillmatic. Things would only get uglier in days to come—none of which detracts from Jay’s accomplishment. Beefs come and go, but a great album must stand the test of time.

What good is a god MC without dope beats? The majority of production credits on RD go to Ski, DJ Clark Kent, and DJ Premier—a familiar cast of East Coast producers who'd already established themselves producing bangers for other rappers before Jigga came along.

Meanwhile, apart from one track each by Trackmasters, Timbaland, and Eminem, the bulk of TBP was crafted by a cast of up-and-coming or unknown producers: Bink! (“The Ruler’s Back,” “All I Need”), Just Blaze (“Girls Girls Girls,” “Song Cry”), and Kanye West (“Izzo,” “The Takeover”).

Although its sonic palette includes funk and soul samples, RD is best known for the jazzy sound exemplified by records like “Can I Live” and “Politics As Usual.” As dope as these records were, the whole hip hop jazz thing was hardly a new concept. In the 1990s, everybody from A Tribe Called Quest to Gang Starr to Digable Planets was assuring us that they had the jazz.

Meanwhile, in the late ‘90s/early 2000s, the prevalent sound of hip-hop were the hard-edged synth-driven beats provided by superproducers like Timbaland, The Neptunes, and Swizz Beatz. Of course Jay had already made classics with those producers prior to recorded TBP, but TBP gets props for introducing the innovative use of sped-up soul samples—as heard on tracks like “U Don’t Know” and “Heart of The City.”

How many established platinum rappers would be willing to let an unknown (which is what Kanye was at the time) produce their album’s first single? Jay’s bold move proved to be sheer genius as both Yeezy and Just Bleezy would go on to become two of rap's greatest producers ever. Before too long, everyone was begging Kanye to do their single and Just Blaze was giving nothing but heat to the rest of the Roc-A-Fella camp, making their crew the hottest in hip-hop.

Ultimately, RD is still a well-produced album that’s aged extremely well after 15 years—but one that relied on a tried-and-tested formula. On the other hand, TBP was a visionary step forward that's had a lasting impact on hip-hop.

One of the best microphone technicians hip-hop has ever seen, Jiggaman crafts his flows with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. If you need proof, look no further than the Watch The Throne documentary, where Jay can be seen repeating his lines from “Why I Love You” over and over.

Combat Jack, who was in the studio for “Regrets,” claims Jay practiced saying the word “opium” for an hour before laying his vocals. Suffice it to say that like Eric B. & Rakim, Jay-Z’s flows ain’t no joke.

So which album has the superior flows? It’s not even a real question because the answer is obviously Reasonable Doubt. Jay was determined to show and prove on his debut so he went extra hard with RD, which includes one of his wickedest flows ever, “22 Twos.”

It’s not that he was being careless on TBP, but he was more comfortable as a rapper and didn’t feel the need to flex his muscles to the same extent. And what else can be said about the incredibly intricate yet conversational delivery on songs like “Friend Or Foe,” “Can I Live,” and “Dead Presidents”? On those songs Jay bobs in and around the beat a kid skipping double dutch without ever breaking a sweat.

Beats are the backdrop, flows are the delivery, but let’s not forget about lyrics. There’s two different ways to look at lyrics, first by structure and secondly by content. Let’s focus on structure first.

Jay’s lyrics have always displayed an almost nerdy intricacy—especially in his early career. Internal rhymes and multisyllabic rhythms abound.

RD boasts the most densely layered rhymes of Jigga’s career, and they were obviously crafted with an obsessive attention to detail (as any reader of Decoded can verify).

Guess there are certain advantages to writing your own rhymes after all. However, we’re guessing after Hov saw Biggie’s be-bop cadences and use of negative space, he started to let that bitch breathe a little. That’s when he slowed down his flow and learned that less could be more.

Still, there’s no denying the engineering skills required to construct lines like, “Even righteous minds go through this/True this, history school us, to spend our money foolish/Bond with jewellers and, watch for intruders/I stepped it up another level, meditated like a Buddhist/Recruited lieutenants with ludicrous/Dreams of getting cream, let's do this.”

If the bars on RD hit with the precision of an assault rifle, TBP was more like blasts from a shotgun: They weren’t as precise, but they got the job done. On TBP, Jay was as concerned with his lyrical structure as he was with his flows. With little to prove, his verses weren’t as densely constructed as they once were. Still, songs like “Takeover” packed a serious punch, lyrically dissecting Jay’s peers on the way to becoming one of the most vicious diss songs ever.

One key to comparing Jay’s early lyrics and his later ones is contained in a line from “Moment of Clarity” from The Black Album, in which Jay reasons: “If skills sold, truth be told/I probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli/Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense/But I did five mil, and I ain’t been rhyming like Common since.”

While the lyrics on TBP are potent and effective, RD’s lyrical structure is more ambitious, acrobatic even, giving Jay’s debut the clear advantage.

Just about all the songs on RD are about the same thing: Jay’s past life as a drug dealer. He does stray from the topic here and there: the slick talk of “Cashmere Thoughts,” the ballsy banter of “Ain’t No Nigga,” the braggadocious boasts of “Brooklyn’s Finest.” But ultimately, the songs boil down to variations on the same theme: Jay and his underworld ties. Some of the verses—on songs like “Politics As Usual” and “Can I Live”—are nearly interchangeable.

On the other hand, TBP offers a much more varied and poignant array of topics. There’s the battle raps of “Takeover,” the big money mogul talk of “U Don’t Know,” and the story telling of “Song Cry.” There are heartfelt moments like “Blueprint (Momma Loves Me),” the vicious rhymes on “Breathe Easy (Lyrical Exercise),” the introspection of “Never Change.” There are songs for the club (“That Nigga Jigga”), songs for the girls (“Girls, Girls, Girls”), and songs for the radio ("Izzo (H.O.V.A.)").

Bottom line: TBP is a more fully rounded experience with the perfect mix of street edge and pop aspirations, while RD is largely monotonous.

Despite being the debut album by a then-unknown rapper, Jigga managed to get some A-list features on RD. He scored a few royal verses from the reigning King of New York (The Notorious B.I.G.), a hook from the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul (Mary J. Blige), and rough, raunchy rhymes from a red-hot up-and-comer (Foxy Brown). There were also guest spots from longtime associates Sauce Money, Big Jaz, and two from a kid named Memphis Bleek.

As impressive as it was, the star-studded guest list still felt like a crutch—as if Hov needed Mary to reassure him that one day he’d be a star. And as Combat Jack pointed out, Foxy Brown saved Jay’s career because she was really the reason “Ain’t No Nigga” became a hit.

Unlike the five albums preceding it, TBP is almost devoid of guests. Although Kanye does the hook on “Never Change,” and Slick Rick, Biz Markie, and Q-Tip deliver uncredited vocals on the chorus to “Girls, Girls, Girls,” the only true guest spot is from Eminem on “Renegade.” This was a dramatic departure from Jay’s previous effort, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, which featured the entire extended Roc familia.

It’s not that The Dynasty didn’t deliver the goods. On the contrary, the album included classics like “Give It 2 Me” and “This Can’t Be Life.” Still it got bogged down at times by all those pesky features from Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek. TBP finally gave Jay’s fans what we always wanted: A Jay-Z album that was all about the Jiggaman.

And yeah, we’ve heard the whole “Eminem murdered you on your own shit” argument before. Maybe he did. But can you definitely say that Biggie didn’t murder Jay on “Brooklyn’s Finest”? (At best they came up even, bar for bar?) And isn’t losing to B.I.G. in ‘96 or to Em in ‘01 a little bit like losing to the ‘98 Bulls?

Even if half of RD’s guests did a spectacular job, the other half of the guests are just along for the ride. And either way, a great album doesn’t need too many guests. Want to hear one of the best rappers ever do what he does? That’s what TBP gives you.

Sequencing an album is an art form in itself that often goes overlooked by casual listeners. Skillful sequencing can transform a disjointed collection of recordings into a cohesive whole with thematic unity and a narrative arc. Each of the two albums we’re comparing consists of 15 songs. RD clocks in at one minute under an hour while TBP is a few minutes over an hour (the difference lies in “Cashmere Thoughts” and “Friend or Foe,” both of which last less than three minutes).

RD is a seamless record—every song leads perfectly into the next. Sonically, the album is tightly unified, maintaining its jazzy aesthetic throughout. The album is also properly paced with most of the highlights coming early on. Though it does lose steam in the second half, the whole thing works because by then the listener has settled into a groove, with that cocaine flow straight numbing your pain.

TBP has a few bumps in the road. As much as we love “Renegade,” there’s no denying that its dark tone doesn’t match the rest of the album. The centerpiece to RD was “Can I Live”—a perfect song halfway through. But on TBP, the centerpiece is the poorly placed “Hola Hovito.” It’s not a bad record but it didn’t really belong there as it doesn’t have the same feel as songs like “All I Need” or “Never Change.”

Album packaging means a lot less in the streaming era than it once did, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering when evaluating an album. RD’s album cover was an iconic image shot by Johnathan Mannion (the photographer’s first album cover) and it was absolutely perfect. You don’t see Jay’s face, but Mannion’s clean, classy aesthetic and Jigga’s expensive threads captured the essence of the rapper’s image and the album itself.

When we imagine Jay at the craps table, sipping margaritas or feeding 50s after kidnapping his friend’s baby's mother, we see him draped in the same Versace swag—scarf on neck, hat with a tilt, cigar in hand—as we did on the cover.

There’s a cigar in Jay’s hand on the cover of The Blueprint as well. But that stogie is where the similarity ends. This time Jay is seen from a bird’s eye view, sitting on a desk that’s littered with props—an extra cigar, an ashtray, a cigar cutter, a phone, and, strangely, a microphone (did Jay stage concerts in his office?). There’s also a number of shoes visible in the upper right-hand corner—foot soldiers of Jay’s. Sporting a Rocawear jacket and smoking his cigar, he looks like he’s about to bust out some orders—but we’re not sure.

What we do know is that while TBP’s blue-hued front cover might go well with songs like “The Takeover” (with its war room atmosphere) or “U Don’t Know” (which celebrates the tycoon status) it doesn’t capture the album overall. That’s why the clear winner here has to be RD.

On “Reminder” Jay famously observed, “Men lie, women lie, number’s don’t.”

So it’s only right we hold Jay to his word and compare the measurable stats behind each album. Since TBP was his sixth album, recorded at the peak of his commercial clout, and RD came out when he was a relative newcomer, TBP had an undeniable advantage from the jump. But still, TBP was released in the midst of an event that was much deeper than rap.

RD had four singles, “Dead Presidents,” “Ain’t No Nigga,” “Can’t Knock The Hustle,” and “Feelin’ It.” None of the songs became Top 40 hits; the highest charting single was “Ain’t No” which peaked at No. 50. “Dead Presidents” didn’t chart at all, and the other two singles didn’t rise higher than No. 70.

Despite being critically acclaimed, the album debuted at No. 23 on the Billboard 200, making it the lowest charting debut for any of his studio albums. RD went gold in its first year which may be impressive by today’s standards, but was no big deal in 1996—especially with acts like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Biggie proving how commercially viable hip-hop could be. The album struggled to pass the 500,000 mark and it wasn’t certified platinum until 2002, after TBP had been released.

TBP, on the other hand, debuted at No. 1, selling 426,000 copies in its first seven days. Outdoing a lesser rapper’s entire album sales during your first week is no small feat, but it’s all the more impressive considering the fact that Jigga dropped the album on 9/11. On that horrific day, the minds of all Americans were filled with fear, panic, and disbelief. It’s hard to imagine anyone thinking to themselves, “Hey, let’s go buy a rap album!” And yet, nearly half a million people did. TBP went on to sell over 2.6 million copies.

On the singles side, Jay’s first two singles, “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and “Girls, Girls, Girls,” were both Top 20 hits. Like “Dead Presidents,” “Song Cry” didn’t chart on the Billboard Hot 100 but “Jigga That Nigga” did manage to climb to No. 66.

Although we consider this entire piece a scientific breakdown, nothing is quite as concrete as number. And when you look at the numbers, TBP clearly reigns supreme over RD. Both albums were handicapped in different ways, but facts are facts—and you can’t escape the wrath of the math.

RD and TBP were heralded as instant classics upon their release but one had a greater impact on Jay’s career than the other.

Despite its critical acclaim, RD left Jay still chasing that elusive combination of fame, fortune, and hit records. In fact, according to Johnathan Mannion, one of the titles Jay was originally considering for RD was Heir To The Throne. But considering the fact that Big was cooking up the masterful Life After Death, that title would have seemed foolish in retrospect. Even if Jay was a great rapper, he simply wasn’t a proven hitmaker.

Jay celebrated the 10-year anniversary of RD by staging a sold-out concert at Radio City Music Hall. But let’s be honest: There’s no way Jay could have sold out Radio City in 1996. He even admitted the album’s lack of impact on “Hard Knock Life” lamenting, “I gave ya prophecy on my first joint, but y‘all lamed out.”

But no one lamed out on The Blueprint. It was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. Most importantly, TBP proved how vital a figure Jay was to hip-hop. Rap careers are known for having short life spans, but Jay showed that he still had plenty to say even after being on top of the game for years.

Not only did the album give Jigga another 15 years of celebrity, whenever his credibility was questioned after flops like Kingdom Come or even The Blueprint 2: The Gift and The Curse, you could point to TBP as an undeniable testament to Jay’s indelible contributions to hip-hop. Maybe that explains why he opened the album with “The Ruler’s Back”; by the end of TBP, it was obvious that the ruler was here to stay.

Although RD established Jay as an enormously gifted rapper, it didn’t cement his position as a major figure in hip-hop. Most rap fans didn’t appreciate that record until years after the fact, when Jay shot to the top of the charts. By the time he released TBP, Jay was already an established hip-hop giant. The record asserted Jay’s dominance in hip-hop like no other record before or since. In other words, R-O-C was running this rap shit.

When considering classics, it’s not enough to measure the impact an album has had on the artist’s career. We’ve also got to account for its legacy within hip-hop culture as a whole.

Since Jay was following trends and not setting them, RD didn’t make Mafioso rap any more popular than it already was. In fact, along with Biggie’s double album Life After Death, it was one of the last hurrahs for Mafiaso rap—a theme that was basically declared dead a year later with the release of The Firm’s The Album.

Had RD never been released, it’s fair to say DJ Premier would still be considered one of the greatest producers ever. Although producing Jay’s debut remains the highlight of both DJ Clark Kent and Ski’s careers, their popularity didn’t exactly soar because of their RD production credits. Jazz rap remained a viable sub-genre, but the dominant sound to emerge in hip-hop after RD was Puff Daddy’s Shiny Suit rap.

Maybe more rappers were popping Cristal and rocking ice after RD, but Raekwon and Ghostface could certainly make the claim that they were the ones who actually popularized those trends.

By contrast, TBP’s effect on hip-hop was both immediate and long-lasting. In the short term, it popularized those chipmunk-soul samples and made Kanye and Just Blaze in-demand producers. Kanye produced only one single in 2001 (“Izzo”) but he produced three in 2002 and five in 2003 (including one of his own). Meanwhile, Just Blaze produced over a dozen bangers in the next two years, including Freeway’s “What We Do,” Cam’Ron’s “Oh Boy,” and Erick Sermon’s “React.” In short, both ‘Ye and Just Blaze went on from TBP to have legendary careers.

During the post–Blueprint era, rappers would be lauded more and more for their business acumen, and boasting about entrepreneurial status became second-nature in hip-hop. Although Puffy, Master P, and other hip-hop moguls went from the block to the boardroom, none were able to articulate their tycoon status as well as Jigga did on TBP. When we hear guys like 50 Cent saying, “I took quarter water and sold it for two bucks/Coca-Cola came and bought it for billions, what the fuck?” we can’t help but think about Jay’s stated goal of raping Def Jam till he was the $100 million man.

There’s no question that Jigga himself understood what he had accomplished. On “The Bounce” from The Blueprint 2, Jigga boasted “Rumor has it The Blueprint classic/Couldn't even be stopped by Bin Laden...Now it's a whole museum of Hov MCers/Everybody duping the flow, you see 'em/Everybody looping up soul/It's like you trying to make The Blueprint 2 before Hov/Shout out to Just Bleezy and Kan-yeezy/See how we adjusted the game so easy.”

TBP struck that perfect balance between street and pop, introspection and boasting, album cuts and radio-ready hits. All rappers seek to find that zen-like equilibrium: When Jay did it and he created a new template for hip-hop.

After comparing each album in 12 statistical categories, the results are in: The Blueprint is better than Reasonable Doubt. We admit RD might have slightly better rapping here and there, but TBP wins in most other categories, by a margin of two to one.

Perhaps the most impressive part of all is that Jay peaked six albums in—and we can’t seriously make that claim about any other rapper. TBP was trend-setting, featured incredible game-changing production, and was undeniably more successful than Jay’s stellar debut.

The truth is, both of these albums deserve five mics, stars, or whatever shiny trinket you prefer. You can’t get more classic than a classic, and both of these fit that description. Even if TBP is better, RD is still an incredibly cohesive album that features some ridiculously brilliant moments.

We know plenty of hip-hop fans are going to disagree with us and ride for RD, and we’re looking forward to hearing your arguments and counter-arguments. So if you’ve got a bone to pick, we’ll see you in the comments. But in the final anaylsis, The Blueprint is Jay-Z’s best album.

End of discussion.