XXL article - 10th Anniversary of Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt

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Basically they do a 10th anniversary look at the making of...also interviews w/Dame Dash, Irv Gotti, and Jay looking back at that time.

Article itself is done in that sort of "oral history" style where they interview everyone involved and let them go through song-by-song...really good stuff, interesting facts for hardcore nerds....One that BLEW my mind: "Feelin' It' and "Politics as Usual" beats (and even lyrical flows) were originally intended for Camp Lo (Ski worked w/them too)...also Jay even said that Ski was ready to give him Camp Lo's "Luchini" too, but he felt bad for stealing so much stuff from them (Jay totes reminds me of Dylan in this article, the way he sort of takes stuff/takes credit for stuff)...

of the main players...Jaz-O is SUPER bitter and boastful, talks about how he actually had to chop that 7 minutes of funk beat in to 8 parts and trigger everything live with NO sequencing...then later Jay plays down his involvement...also says they tried to sabotage his verse on Bring It On, not giving him any time to write stuff....

Foxy and Jay confirm that SHE wrote her own verse on "Ain't No Nigga"

"Brooklyn's Finest" was originally a solo Jay song called "No More Mr. Nice Guy"...Big wanted the beat so Clark Kent got him agree to guest for free, tho Irv was against it....wierd thing, for as fluid and spontaneous as that song sounds...BIG's verse wasn't recorded until two months after Jay's! That kinda blew my mind...that song sounds so free and playful...

Interview w/Dame almost makes you feel bad for him....he sounds genuinely hurt by the whole thing...Jay comes off..like Jay...sort of unemotional about the split (Dylan/Baez type shit)....mentions how his "friend" Chris Martin from Coldplay rented "Streets Is Watching" and it really freaked him out, like "This isn't the guy I know"....

....Jay says his street/rap ratio was about 30/70 when making Reasonable Doubt...mostly focused on rap but keeping one toe in just to make sure....

― M@tt He1geson, Rendolent Ding-Dong (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 21 July 2006 14:11 (nineteen years ago)

yeah I'd been meaning to check that article out but still haven't, sounds interesting (although personally I've always been in the very small minority that likes In My Lifetime Vol. 1 more than Reasonable Doubt).

― Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore), Friday, 21 July 2006 14:26 (nineteen years ago)

another awesome factoid: In Brooklyn's Finest, the way they use a half a bar to trade off was totally by chance, Jay says the way the song was structured the bars didn't quite work right to go back to back, so the trade-off bars were sort of a jerry rigged solution...which is weird, cuz that's totally what makes the song so awesome, goes to show you how much little by chance things can result in unintended genius.

― M@tt He1geson, Rendolent Ding-Dong (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 21 July 2006 15:24 (nineteen years ago)

I might agree with you Alex, but then I've never been as enamored of RD as everyone else.

Yeah Brooklyn's Finest is a 5 bar loop.

― deej.. (deej..), Friday, 21 July 2006 15:29 (nineteen years ago)

jay also talks about one line he had big take out cuz they were already worried about the "If Faith have twins she'd probably have 2 Pacs"....apparently, originally, Biggie ended the tail end of the verse that end "I'm warnin' ya" (on the final, Jay just goes Ha Ha) with another line "Most hated in California", but Jay had him take it out.

― M@tt He1geson, Rendolent Ding-Dong (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 21 July 2006 15:33 (nineteen years ago)

I always enjoy it when XXL does these. Easily the best things the mag does. This one was laid out better and easier to read than e.g. the Cuban Linx one from last year, though it doesn't have that one's amazing, killer quote, wish I could remember from who, about Staten Island: "We're not saying all Italians are mobsters, but we ain't blind and shit."

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 21 July 2006 15:51 (nineteen years ago)

the streets ain't tryin to hear that, get gone

― psycho pete (pete38), Friday, 21 July 2006 16:20 (nineteen years ago)

Illmatic's still better.

(But I'm looking forward to the article).

― js (honestengine), Friday, 21 July 2006 16:37 (nineteen years ago)

The "Ready to Die" and "Life After Death" entries in this series are both must-reads.

― deej.. (deej..), Friday, 21 July 2006 16:37 (nineteen years ago)

yeah i thought this was cool....i didn't know it was an ongoing thing, i'd love to see the cuban links, r2d, and life after death ones...

― M@tt He1geson, Rendolent Ding-Dong (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 21 July 2006 16:43 (nineteen years ago)

Is there going to be a 10th ann. reissue of RD, like they had for Illamtic and Ready to Die?

― ramon fernandez (ramon fernandez), Friday, 21 July 2006 23:23 (nineteen years ago)

http://xxlmag.com/online/?p=2471

this article?

― splates (splates), Saturday, 22 July 2006 00:21 (nineteen years ago)

i think this is part of it too

http://xxlmag.com/online/?p=2477

― splates (splates), Saturday, 22 July 2006 00:25 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

Is this the closest thing we have to a Reasonable Doubt thread?

Bleek still nearly ruins "Coming of Age" for me.

"Let's drive around awhile"
"COOL NIGGA"

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 24 December 2007 05:21 (eighteen years ago)

wtf the whole concept of "Coming Of Age" is a duo song, it wouldn't be the same if it were just Jay. plus Jay wrote Bleek's lyrics on it so his parts are pretty good.

what little I saw of VH1's "Classic Albums" episode on RD was pretty cool, but i need to see the whole thing.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 24 December 2007 14:39 (eighteen years ago)

I wish when Jay and Ski were shooting interviews for that special they'd decided to do some songs together again, too. Ski's beats on Camp Lo's Black Hollywood > most of the beats on American Gangster.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 24 December 2007 14:42 (eighteen years ago)

"what little I saw of VH1's "Classic Albums" episode on RD was pretty cool"

i thought it was pretty crap compared to the xxl piece. no one really said anything too perceptive and they all seemed not too impressed with jay for whatever reason. like they were just sat there cos they had to be.

― titchyschneiderMk2, Wednesday, 26 December 2007 18:05 (eighteen years ago)

wtf the whole concept of "Coming Of Age" is a duo song, it wouldn't be the same if it were just Jay. plus Jay wrote Bleek's lyrics on it so his parts are pretty good.

-- Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 24 December 2007 14:39

no man, lyrically they're fire and obv required for the song to work conceptually, it's just bleek's way-overwrought delivery that nearly ruins it for me.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 26 December 2007 21:35 (eighteen years ago)

three months pass...

first verse of cashmere thoughts is still O_O

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 30 March 2008 17:36 (eighteen years ago)

Is there going to be a 10th ann. reissue of RD, like they had for Illamtic and Ready to Die?

-- ramon fernandez (ramon fernandez), Friday, July 21, 2006 11:23 PM

i was def hoping they'd recorded that rd w/strings show from 06 and put it out w/a ten-year anniversary disc or something. shame.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 30 March 2008 17:39 (eighteen years ago)

Me too. They did include a couple tracks from it with that one album that sucked.

― The Reverend, Sunday, 30 March 2008 23:03 (eighteen years ago)

six years pass...

'we don't know how to go into places and act properly'

'shut the fuck up!!!'

that cracks me up every single time

― j., Thursday, 5 March 2015 02:07 (eleven years ago)

who owns the masters to this now. dame?

― nose, Thursday, 5 March 2015 04:44 (eleven years ago)

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