It’s been awhile without a Rap Review Challenge, but I got one and we’re back! For those of you who don’t know, I review a rap song. I get education in the rap genre. You get a review that some find hilarious. Who knows?

Here’s this post’s Youtube video:

And now the review! It starts out with a greyscale montage of New York City. Then our rapper, known by two letters — Jay, and Z — starts talking about how he’s in all sorts of New York City locations.

He then starts dropping anecdotes about his life in the NYC, making sure to rhyme every so often. He tends to alternate between two rhyming lines and two non-rhyming lines, and then he drops sophisticated rhymes like “Texas” and “Lexus”. He also alternates videos of him sitting on things with more montages. …All in grayscale.

50 seconds in we switch to an alternating skyscape with some woman, presumably Alica Keys — since the song is “by Jay Z, featuring Alica Keys”. Sadly my rap-ucation has not yet reached Alica Keys…

Presumably Alica Keys says “New York” in a really catchy tone while playing her oddly placed piano. …Yes, she is playing piano presumably right in the middle of the street. No one seems to mind.

She doesn’t get run over.
She doesn’t get arrested for being a traffic hazard.

And to top it off, she seems to really like New York.

And, by the way she moves, she seems to really like playing piano.

It’s the wonderful grayscale world of rap videos.

We then go back to Jay Z who gives us a history of the Yankees. And then he brags about how he made the Yankee hat more famous than some other unspecified entity. He also brags and brags about “having it made”. Sometimes it seems like rap videos are just an outlet for rappers to brag about how awesome they are.

Also, I can’t believe I got this far into the video and forgot to mention JZ’s funny hat. Has he always been wearing it? It goes great with his oversized rap-glasses.

Back to J Zee. He’s now listing famous landmarks he knows that are also in New York City — The Statue of Liberty, the Ex-World Trade Center, and the titular Empire State Building. Cue Alica Keys segue!

Alica Keys and Jay Z have met up, and the piano music continues without her needing to play like she had to before. They then alternate between various skyscapes and Jay nodding vigorously in the general direction of Alica.

Then more photo montages overlayed with rapping ensue while J.z. admires the Empire State Building from a window, while wearing suspiciously non-rapper-like clothing. Alica Keys also seemed to have left and instead is part of the photo montages.

After the awesome “Champion” / “Ambien” rhyme, Jay Z and Alica Keys meet up again! IN COLOUR! The coloured steps — the ones that are obnoxiously reflective — then start a new precident and all the future montages and freaky piano-in-the-streets videos are now in colour. And then the song ends.

All in all, despite the bashing, the song was quite nice. The biggest oddity was the ink budget. Over 90% of the music video was in greyscale, but then the music video magically turned colour! It seems as if the music video producers spent all their ink money on piano insurance for Alica, in case it broke while she played it in the middle of the street.

The chorus was nice, though. I’m feeling nice, so I’ll give the song a hard-fought A-. Well played.

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