Magna Carta… Holy Grail by Jay‐Z
Magna Carta... Holy Grail is the twelfth studio album by American rapper Jay-Z. The album was released on July 4, 2013 via digital download by the Jay-Z Magna Carta app for free, and was released on July 8, 2013 for retail sale, by Roc-A-Fella and Roc Nation while being distributed by Universal. The album was promoted via various commercials presented by Samsung and was not preceded by any retail singles. The album features guest appearances by Rick Ross, Nas, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé Knowles, and Frank Ocean among others. Production on the album was primarily handled by Timbaland and Jerome "J-Roc" Harmon, while also featuring production by Boi-1da, Mike Will Made It, Hit-Boy, Mike Dean, No I.D., The-Dream, Swizz Beatz, and Pharrell Williams among others. Magna Carta... Holy Grail was met with mixed reviews from music critics upon its release. On the day of its physical release in the United States, the album was certified Platinum by the RIAA for shipments of over 1,000,000 copies due to the unprecedented digital download deal with Samsung.
Released in 2013, <i>Magna Carta... Holy Grail</i> finds Jay in the throes of middle-aged success: He’s a parent now (a life he details on “JAY Z Blue”), and has opened his portfolio to the worlds of art and high fashion (as evidenced on “Picasso Baby” and “Tom Ford”). At times, the spatter of makes and models on <i>Magna Carta... Holy Grail</i> is so dense, it sounds like he’s reading a barcode (“BBC”). But you also sense him riding the thrill of being a Black man in conventionally white spaces—not just the boardroom, but the auction house, the Hamptons. And while this is an album that celebrates the lush life, Jay’s got too much soul to forget where he came from. The history that once stopped with Biggie and the Marcy Projects now leads back to slave ships (“Oceans”) and to the diamonds that once symbolised his wealth—but that now symbolise the African soil from which they were stolen (“Fuckwithmeyouknowigotit”). Still, <i>Magna Carta</i> is ultimately a high-end product about a high-end existence. It’s an album in which luxury cars warp into timeless sculptures, and the beats—gleaming, mechanistic and borderline avant-garde—have the worked precision of watch brands most people don’t even know exist. Can you relate to JAY-Z’s life on <i>Magna Carta... Holy Grail</i>? Probably not—but he shows you how to celebrate it.
