Jay-Z : The Dynasty: Roc La Familia 2000

Last week I was at a meeting at 135th and Edgecombe — Harlem USA, baby — talking about the state of hiphop. Now, folk have been bemoaning the state of hiphop since the day after the first speaker was hooked up to a lamppost in a South Bronx playground, but this conversation felt different. As recently as two years ago, when Puffy was the center of every "wherehiphopat?" conversation, rap felt like the sound of an alternative. Now, when a young woman at this meeting spoke of "jiggafying the culture," she meant American culture in general. That's what's different: hip hop and mainstream culture have no difference, at least for people under 30. This is the United States of Jigga. In this election year, there's a poster around New York pitching "HipHop for President." So forget Gush and Bore. What is the jiggafied America we're creating? Some answers can be found on the new release from Jigga himself. JayZ's "The Dynasty: Roc La Familia" comes hot on the heels of "Vol 3 ... Life and Times of S. Carter," the bigpimpin', blingblingin', multiplatinum followup to the "Annie"sampling, canIgetaclubhit "Vol 2 ... Hard Knock Life." He clearly wants to maintain his hold on the quickforgetting culture, not vanish from our thoughts like a Puff (Daddy) of smoke. The general mood of "The Dynasty" is ominous and tense, from the first synth line on. It's far more nihilistic than you would expect from a man whose nickname can define a culture. It's also more lackluster, even a little whiny: nearly every track is about playahaters, the ever present enemies who define JayZ's world outside the couple of close friends who define his posse. (Memphis Bleek and Beanie Sigel, fellow fellas of RocaFella Records, are all over this album.) "S. Carter is in a bad mood / y'all made a bad move," he raps. I wonder: who exactly are these "niggas" JayZ is so mad at? Can we talk about his anger? A couple of tracks are celebratory, particularly the current hit "I Just Wanna Love U (Give It to Me)," the only cut with the bounce that brought Jigga to the top of the world. But JayZ's worldview is hellish, painting violence, money hunger, and solipsism as the core human characteristics, matched, perhaps, only by hypocrisy. Here's his comeon: "you say you savin' it for marriage / let's keep it real ma you savin' it for carriage / you wanna see how far I'ma go, how much I'ma spend." At its worst, as on "1900 Hustlers," the album meets the rap stereotypes peddled by unfriendly media like Newsweek, whose recent cover story claimed that there was nothing to rap but guns and cash. That's not the case. Rap isn't the alternative; but there are alternatives within rap. And on two cuts on "The Dynasty," JayZ faces them. "This Can't Be Life," with Beanie Sigel and Scarface, moves from JayZ's childhood to a new child's stillbirth. The track is slow, a little mournful, and, like the lyrics, astonishingly thoughtful. The chorus: "This can't be life / this can't be love / this can't be right / there's gotta be more / this can't be us." The last song on the album, "Where Have You Been," picks up the question of childhood, and offers clues to both the troubles of the rest of the album and a way forward. "Hey dad — yeah, it's your boy — remember me?" it begins. "It's about time we had a fathertoson sitdown / let me tell you 'bout your fatherless sons." The sob in his throat and sniffle in his voice make this not only JayZ's most moving song, but almost unique in rap: a combination of vulnerability and heartwrenching anger. It's an amazing moment, and so brutally raw that it's actually hard to listen to. He asks: "Do you even remember the tender boy you turned into a cold young man?" But the song proves that JayZ hasn't gone cold. That's just the face he presents most of the time. That's how to make it in the Jiggafied America. Pain gets translated into rage, trauma into paranoia, poverty into cash obsession. That's how to make it; but I hope, not optimistically, that "Where Have You Been" and "This Can't Be Life" show another way to make it. Because the rest of the album shows that this playa thing is played out. If JayZ can figure out how to move deeper, then maybe the culture could really use some Jiggafying.