Album Review: Jay-Z - Magna Carta... Holy Grail

Samsung Galaxy users were the first to hear Magna Carta… Holy Grail… Those of us with the wrong phone had to wait. So, what of 'the medium is the message'? Here, as elsewhere, it's nonsense. Regardless of how you get your hands on Jay-Z's 12th full-length, when you do you'll be holding one of the best five albums Hov has ever released.

As is often the case with Jay, much of the credit goes to his collaborators. Justin Timberlake is scintillating on Holy Grail. Frank Ocean's hook on Oceans is incomparable. It's as if the man is inventing new genres of music as he goes. “I hope my black skin don't dirt this white tuxedo,” sings Ocean, somehow channelling Nina Simone and Jagged Edge at once. Then there's Timbaland's and J-Roc's beat for Picasso Baby and Pharrell's BBC. Our host's light – which, we learn on FUTW, shines at “a trillion watts” – isn't dimmed by the comparisons though. Fuckwithmeyouknowigotit is a tour de force. Perhaps most telling is Versus, 50 seconds of high quality braggadocio. “Your last shit ain't better than my first shit/Your best shit ain't better than my worst shit”. Only on Tom Ford and, surprisingly, the album's opening verse does our host get lazy with his lyrics and repetitive with his flow.

With every Jay-Z album comes the question: where does this one fit in the back catalogue? Well, the latest sits below classics The Blueprint, Reasonable Doubt and The Black Album. But Hov remains, at least technically, the best rapper alive. Here we are reminded why.