48 Laws of Hip Hop

First and Foremost, I want to say that the new Jay-Z single “Death of Auto Tune” that has been circling the Internet for the past few days is a banger. The production by NO ID is insane. The coliseum ready drums are painted with the brush of a baseline from the 70s, and a cinematic guitar sample. With that being said, lets look beyond the bass clef under the melody into the truth of this record.

The producer of this record is NO ID, Kanye’s mentor. It’s also rumored that Kanye helped produce the track. Now, being that Kanye just recorded his genre breaking album 808s and Heartbreak in COMPLETE auto tune. One can only assume that this is emphatically a diss record and Ye is one of those on the receiving end along with T-pain, Lil Wayne, Ron Brownz, and other artists who use auto tune.

Now let’s back track. Kanye’s 2007 album release “The Graduation” was brought to a close with the track “Big Brother”, a song dedicated to the mentorship and guidance by Jay-Z. My initial reaction was that this reminded me of the first law in the 48 Laws of Power written by Robert Green, “Never outshine the master”. At this point in music, Kanye was bigger than he’d ever been and there was a buzz about him being the biggest artist on Def Jam. But to quiet down the rumors, and prevent any out lash from the Rap guru, he stokes Jay’s ego by dedicating a song a song to him. The same thing happened with Lil Wayne and his Carter III album. There was again talk about Lil Wayne saying he was better than Jay, which caused controversy in the media. What does Wayne do? He drops “Mr. Carter”, a song in honor of both of them demonstrating another “don’t outshine the master” move.

So while Robert Greene’s philosophy was being demonstrated by Wayne and Ye, Hov is applying the exact same philosophies. After Jay’s 2003 “Black Album” release Jay “retired” from Hip Hop. This was Greene’s 16th law, “Use absence to increase respect and honor”. Jay left the game when he was at the top of his career. This retirement then put Jay into a powerful business role with Def Jam. In this new found white collar position Jay exemplified, by the nature of his job, law number 11, “Learn to keep people dependent on you”. During Jay’s retirement we heard him on a few random features with some pop artists but that was it. Jay also applied law number 34, “Be royal in your own fashion, act like a king to be treated like one”. We all know that Jay is the epitome of all things fresh and behaves like he’s the air to the throne in the kingdom of “Cool”. Unfortunately it seems as of late, Jay has been undoing all of this. Simultaneously Wayne and Ye were following law number 41,”avoid stepping on a great man’s shoes.”

After the public homage paid by Ye and Wayne, by dedicating songs to Jay, and appearing in countless videos together over the years why would Jay put out a song called “Death of Auto Tune”? Ye and Wayne are of the few artists who use auto tune the most in the industry. It seems as though Jay was applying law number 3, “Conceal your intentions”. Why the public blow? Can he really put out a song like this and say it’s not a diss toward these two artists? Jay has almost UNapplied all of these successful laws. Why would Jay come out and attack the artists of today who have found some success? It’s almost childish. Isn’t Jay above something like this? I would think so. Others may feel the same way Jay does, but isn’t Jay above being the “messenger”? Or is Jay just trying to generate hype around the Blueprint III.

This may be a stretch, but this does demonstrate the calculated methodical moves done with extreme precision that artists have to follow in order to be successful.