Jay-Z Unplugged

The personification of big-ticket rap recording with alt heroes The Roots could’ve been positioned as one of the era’s rare mainstream/backpacker summits, a way to lend live-band “respectability” to an MC who’d been scoffed at by purists for a materialism that accompanied his superstardom. But that’d be doing their Unplugged session a massive disservice: the real pull to this set isn’t in some clash or reconciliation of glossy-vs-boho sensibilities, but of a lyricist who found a powerful working partnership to show off the depth and dynamism that was always there. So while he gets a good laugh from the get-go by calling the gig a “poetry reading,” he uses the opportunity to show off two of his biggest strengths: his ear for beats, and his ability to reshape himself when those beats are elaborated upon. This set was recorded two months after The Blueprint landed on the bleakest release date possible, so in some ways it’s a sort of stock-taking do-over of Jay’s intended victory lap, too — a three-fer opening slate that peaks midway with a reiteration and re-ignition of his Nas/Mobb Deep beef via “Takeover” that incorporates the “Shook Ones (Part II)” beat as a special knife-twist for the latter party. But it’s when they dive into the earlier, bigger hits that the scope of the thing starts to feel impressive — Timbaland’s drum’n’bass-inverting funk on “Jigga What, Jigga Who” and the Egyptology of “Big Pimpin’” maintain their shape thanks to a band that replays the  samples like they wrote the sources, and the mid-set stretch that fits crowdpleasers “Can I Get A…”, “Hard Knck Life (Ghetto Anthem),” and “Ain’t No N____” into a tight-and-lean four minutes and change distills his imperial-phase mode down to the essence without sacrificing its charm an iota. Jay is locked in enough that even when it sounds like his flow’s about to falter, he chuckles or dekes or shifts emphasis and snaps back tight to it like he’s been deliberately testing his limits (and succeeding). And then he goes widescreen and starts really vamping at the tail end, as the last four cuts run nearly a half-hour combined. There we get him at his most defensively triumphant on “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” featuring an incandescent Mary J. Blige shifting the focus to her own “Family Affair” spotlight, his sentimental mode waxing reflective yet still guarded on “Song Cry,” a purely joyous pop-funk showman take on “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me),” and a closer that follows up the chirpy invulnerability of “Jigga That N____” with a surprise appearance by the Blueprint outtake “People Talkin’.” That latter studio cut feels like a throw-in after the Unplugged set, but it’s also a lost classic try-and-test-me masterclass featuring the last (and one of the most smoothly sinister) Ski beats he ever pulled cards over.