Jay-Zung

A few nights ago, this ad premiered during Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Rumors of a new Jay-Z album have been circulating in the past months, especially after The-Dream went on Hot 97 back in April and spoiled the surprise. Great job, Terius. Now we have our official commercial announcement and it is… well, it’s a commercial.

Just want to get this out first: Hooray, new Jay-Z album. Hooray, Rick Rubin. Hooray, Pharrell/Timbaland/Swizz Beatz… I think my criticism of this ad was slightly delayed because of the sheer enormity this room was packing. Then I watched it again. 

The way the commercial begins with the camera eavesdropping on Hov is certainly enticing, WE’RE GETTING TO SEE AN ARTIST AT WORK! FUN, RIGHT?! If it had ended here as a 15-second spot with Magna Carta Holy Grail flashed on the screen, a sufficient level of curiosity would have been reached; then fans could go crazy speculating on message boards. As the ad continues, the camera wanders (stumbles) into a studio session where it goes around like a kid grabbing at pant legs and asking obvious questions. In turn, we get to witness Jay using words like “duality” and a release date, “July 4”.

I think I smell a rat. 

Oh is that a Samsung tablet? Oh boy… feeling played. Around a minute into the commercial, Jay mentions the internet is like the wild [wild] west where no rules have been written yet. While that may be true, the internet has been around for a minute now and people are getting smarter about recognizing gimmicks. It’s going to take a lot of thinking to top Radiohead’s “pay what you want” model which ended up being the biggest disruption since the MP3. Now, to Jay’s credit, I’m sure this big idea he’s hinting at is most likely not his idea. If you’re not up to speed, let me explain what’s happening. An android app will be released prior to July 4 that Android users can download in anticipation of the album. Then, one-million free Magna Carta Holy Grail copies will be distributed to users. Congrats, Jay, Samsung is now your biggest fan and bought a million-pack. After recognizing this is a Samsung ad, you’ll pick up on a really contrived script. Are we supposed to believe this is the first time Jay has talked to these guys about the album? Has he not heard his own music yet? Did those speakers really blow? "That ain’t supposed to work. Not against these lush sounds and this live instrumentation." When you search the video on YouTube, there’s no video title without mention of the word Samsung. 

Now, I’m not sure if all this criticism is cropping up because this commercial is a huge letdown, or the fact that this announcement is in the shadow of another recent release: Yeezus, a very radio-unfriendly, non-commercial record. Either way, we can agree this commercial is the complete antithesis of Yeezus, it represents everything Ye rhymes against during the 40 minutes of his new record. Kanye has even been quoted as saying he purposefully didn’t write anything fitting for an NBA spot. Jay did that instead with this 3-minute spot during a commercial break of a tense NBA Final series.

Given this was just a tease, it’s hard to determine whether these tracks are actually good or not, they certainly sound nice. But the corporate partnerships and mix-and-match of stars can’t help but remind us of the time back in 2006 when Kingdom Come dropped, yikes…

"The idea is to really finish the album and drop it"  

- Sean Carter, 2013

Royal T

last minute thoughts

• nice loft
• Rick Rubin’s horizontal game is on point
• should’ve caught this at :01, but the video employs that terrible muted-color filter like every other Samsung ad
• this could have been much more fun as a series of ads teasing the announcement á la Random Access Memories
• makes me think twice about those Watch the Throne sessions