Eight months later, Jay rapped with magisterial pride on Cam’ron’s “Welcome To New York City,” a local-pride anthem built on post-9/11 defiance. Less than two weeks after he released his album, Jay started a show at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom by announcing that he’d dropped on the same day as the Twin Towers. Jay himself has something to do with that he started using catastrophe to burnish his own myth right away. After 20 years, the album’s whole story is still inextricable from the 9/11 attacks. That accident of scheduling has always been a part of the myth of The Blueprint. You might’ve just witnessed a generational horror, but you could still throw Jay on your headphones and feel indestructible. If a new Jay-Z album was out, then you went and bought that shit immediately. The world had changed, but some things remained unquestioned. On that calamitous morning, when people didn’t know if New York was under attack or the world was ending or what, people still found their ways to record stores or Best Buys, and they still bought The Blueprint. Jay-Z’s opus wasn’t supposed to come out on September 11, but Jay was worried about bootleggers - he was always worried about bootleggers - and so he moved up the album release a week. You can listen to the album’s lead single ‘Izzo (H.O.V.A.)’ in the video below.I know multiple people who woke up one Tuesday morning, watched from windows or Brooklyn rooftops as the second plane hit and the World Trade Center fell, and then went out and bought The Blueprint. The Blueprint album release coincided with what has since been described as, “the deadliest terrorist attack in American history.” However, shockingly The Blueprint sold over 427,000 copies in its opening week, becoming Jay-Z’s fourth consecutive album to reach number one on the Billboard 200 chart. However, the most traumatising event for Americans was when millions watched a second plane hit the South Tower on live television, which then collapsed. At 08:46 in the morning, reports of a plane crashing into the Trade Centre’s North Tower hit news screens across the entire world. On the morning of Jay-Z’s album day, two hijacked planes were flown into New York’s World Trade Centre skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan. Jay-Z and his label had unanimously agreed that the date for his album release would be September 11th, 2001, now infamously known as ‘9/11’. However, an inconceivable, unprecedented incident occurred on album day that gripped the globe, and the event was of such a magnitude that even the biggest rapper in the world couldn’t divert people’s attention towards his album. Having built such a buzz around the album, it seemed to Carter that, as per usual, album day would be a huge success. Aimed at Mobb Deep and Nas, the track began the legendary beef between Nas and Jay-Z. The infamous Jay-Z diss-track ‘Takeover’ was the first album cut given to radio. With the track being such a hit, Jay-Z even performed the track live at the first-ever BET Awards in June 2001.Īlthough ‘Izzo (H.O.V.A)’ was the album’s lead single, it wasn’t the first track from the album released to radio. Produced by Kanye West and recorded at Baseline Studios in New York, the song debuted in the top 10, peaking at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. However, some things are just out of the rapper’s control, and what happened on the day of his Blueprint album release was (unfortunately) out of his control.Ĭarter’s 2001 album rollout commenced exceptionally well when he released his lead single, ‘Izzo (H.O.V.A.),’ more widely known as ‘H to the Izzo’. Hov knows this, hence why every time he is set to release a project, the Brooklyn rapper makes sure his marketing and promotion are carried out meticulously and strategically, so he has a faultless album rollout. Operating at such a high level in the music business and with the world setting high expectations for every project you announce, you can’t afford to bungle album day. However, it wasn’t The Black Album that gave Jay-Z problems. After this body of work, the rapper began releasing more erratically. Hov maintained this streak until 2003, when he unveiled, The Black Album. Following his 1995 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, the rapper relentlessly released a new project for fans every year and did so for nine years.
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