Jay Z – The Black Album — 10 Year Anniversary: Where Was I

November 14, 2003.

That was the album’s official release date. However, it leaked the previous week’s Wednesday or Thursday, depending on where you lived.

It was November 5^th.

I remember that night vividly. I was on a hip-hop message board, suddenly, the two most anticipated albums of the month, “The Black Album” and G-Unit’s “Beg For Mercy” had “popped up.” Also, Fabolous’ “More Street Dreams: The Mixtape” came out too.

That night was crazy. With those two big releases, the website crashed. Apparently, the website received some much traffic that it went offline because everyone was scrambling for the album.

It was Jay’s final album; so, everyone wanted to hear it. They wanted to see how he would bow out of the rap game.

I remember having a conversation with my dude Eddie in high school. We had last period gym together. We began talking about this album and I brought up the idea of potentially buying two copies, one to play and one to just have, hoping it would be valuable in the future. He nodded his head and said he would probably do that too.

This was around the time that I labeled Jay as the G.O.A.T. Once I heard this album I knew Jay was ahead of everyone.

If someone would ask me, “Hey Ara, who’s your favorite rapper?”

I’d answer, “Jay-Z.”

And they would be shocked, as if I committed a crime.

“Not Tupac?” would be a recurring response. But I was never a big ‘pac fan.

Thus, I would tell them to check out “The Black Album“ and tell me Jay isn’t the illest or at least one of them.

Also, I remember how much marketing revolved around the album. In one advertisement, they said the album would feature twelve tracks by twelve different producers, unfortunately; only eleven made the cut, somewhere tracks produced by Dr. Dre and DJ Premier were lost.

When I first heard it, I knew it was a classic. You could feel this record was special. The first time I listened to the album and reached track ten, “Public Service Announcement,” I knew it was going to be a big record. Not a big radio record, but in the sense that it would be a staple in his large catalogue, become a favorite record with his core fan base.

That beat, oh my God, Just Blaze absolutely destroyed it. When I first heard it, I  immediately started bobbing my head. The shift from the piano keys to the drums is dope.

I knew that “PSA” was going to be my favorite record off the album; I began reciting the lyrics even rapping them to my brother. He had a camcorder at the time and decided to film me.

This was before YouTube.

Unfortunately, the tape got lost somewhere, I wished I had it now; it would’ve been hysterical to revisit that. I say it would’ve been funny because, and I don’t know how this happen but, when Jay says “I got the hottest chick in the game wearing my chain,” of course he means Beyoncé, my mom walks through my brother’s door, amazing timing on her part!

I think my brother saw how much I liked this album that he began listening to Jay Z regularly and became a big fan too.

The album is a classic, still, ten years later. I believe with the duration of time, its majestic feel only grew. As the years passed, each song got better. After each listen, you would grasp a bit of the track’s excellence. For example, when I first listened to the album, back in 2003, I would skip “Allure.” However, I can now see the brilliance behind it. The Neptunes production was top-notch too.

Also, do you remember how many different variations of “The Black Album” there were? You had the grey, red, brown, blue, silver, etc albums. It seemed each producer, established and up-and-coming, remixed the album. By luck, Danger Mouse’s version was the biggest. I thought it was an incredible idea from Jay’s camp to release an acapella version because it allowed artists to use their creativity to add their own spin to it.