American Gangster [Explicit]

It's amazing how this album has received an overall 4.5-star rating on Amazon when obviously this album is the epitome of lackluster. This album is chock-full of "skippable" songs and it disgusts me how certain rappers get automatic points on the strength of their name alone whereas other rappers receive automatic deductions based simply on their region of origin or because they don't have that "brand name" recognition. This album is not great, it's good and it's barely even that.

Infamous rapper Jay-z returns with American Gangster which is based on the Denzel Washington film of the same name. Jay-z has slippery and menacing motives for making American Gangster: he's confessed he was IMPRESSED with the Denzel character in American Gangster because, as Jay-z rationalizes, a black guy's never ascended that "high" in a movie before. To recap, the Denzel character's a villainous devil who was a heroin kingpin who smuggled the drug into the US on returning American military planes during Vietnam!!!! Subhumans don't get much lower than the Denzel character, yet to Jay-z, this apparently is flattering for black portrayals in films; as a Caucasian, this offended my bleeding-heart sensibilities to the bone.

I must proudly declare that Bill O'Reilly's my unquestioned guru when it comes to determining which rapper I consider vile, merely degenerate or barely palatable!!!! If you've watched his informative Factor program--and who as a rap fan hasn't?--you know O'Reilly's scorn of late was reserved for Nas because of his sadistic insensitivity to the parents and students of Virginia Tech. Therefore, I actually wasted money on this Jay-z album hoping he wouldn't be another Nas (defined as someone who preaches violence, anti-police venom, profanity and maltreatment of women in his anti-social toxicity disguised as music).

However and morosely, after buying American Gangster and hoping for a rapper who didn't disparage blacks and women or abuse profanity, I must sentence Jay-z as being as bad if not worse than some of the most infamous, foul-mouthed rappers like Naz and Fiddy Cent. This is based on an impartial, independent, and fair and balanced analysis of Jay-z's lyricizing on American Gangster.

The moral relativists who comprise the critics of the entertainment world have wickedly praised Jay-z's album as not glorifying the Frank Lucas story but rather only "exploring" the lure of a gangster's life...BS!!!! Jay-z's lyrics clearly fete the gangster lifestyle since in the context of his lyrics, he's usually "rapping" about all the materialistic appreciation and power a dealer acquires. To the average teen or young man listener, this sounds tempting, not dissuasive, and Jay-z could've and should've included cautionary tales of consequence in his "songs" (such as the fact that dealers end up dead or in prison), or straightforward warnings against such behavior if he was serious about not glorifying the drug dealer/criminal lifestyle.

I base my condemnation of Jay-z on the content and lyrics of just his introduction where he abuses the word ni**er TEN TIMES!!!! Like all violent and depraved rappers, Jay-z uses such inflammatory slurs with liberal abandon and--here's the worst trespass--without ANY RELATION TO THE GIST OF his little rap song. To get the "message" of his introduction out (still don't know what it is due to his illiterate "grammar"), Jay-z surely could've banished the word ni**er. If a white man would "create" a "song" like this, he'd be lynched by Sharpton, Jackson, the ACLU, college professors and the NAACP. I find it very despairing that no one in the black community, or the reviewers here, protests against this self-destructive abuse of slurs.

Moving right along, the poetically titled "Ignorant S*it" has no purpose other than to be purely destructive. The "song" glorifies gang-banging by explicitly describing blacks murdering other blacks (whom he always refers to as ni**ers), celebrates drug-dealing by intimating about details of a drug deal, and glorifies explicit sex by using terms such as c*m, spreading legs, and giving head. Women in this song are referred to as h*es and bit*hes, and the swearing is virulently off the charts: the chorus consists of nothing but "fu*k" or "s*it!!!!"

Yet another equally infamous "song" is "Say Hello." This showpiece of healthy and intelligent social commentary actually encourages already wayward, black disaffection by brainwashing blacks to think they have it so hard, using all kinds of class warfare cliches!!!! He then abuses excuses like poverty et al to justify crime and gang-banging. At the end, Jay-z even has the nerve to aggressively defy people who want rappers like him to stop using the words ni**er and bit*h, instead extorting that he'll only desist if blacks get more handouts or politically correct misconceptions of social "justice."

I'll only cover the aforementioned, three songs to spare the decent reader from being bombarded with the low-minded foulness that infests Jay-z's album; the intelligent reviewer will deduce that the content of these three songs is widespread on American Gangster.

The sacrilege to our society is when American Gangster debuted in early November, it actually did so at number one, total validation of the conviction that our society's ill!!!! Consolidating the unwholesomeness that I've exposed, this album also has the usual flaws of rap: illiterate attempts at grammar, ebonics all over the place, and a reinforcement of slanderous, black stereotypes!!!! I order people who are contemplating purchasing this baseness to perish the thought; if you misguidedly assume this "music's" worthy, I'll pray for you in church on Sundays.

if you love Jay Z, check out his homie Devin the Dude Smoke Sessions, Vol. 1- track 3 getting high is something to smoke to - whoah - this is the first album since Rapalot Days and the first album of Devin's to hit the Billboard Charts - Congrats.......and congrats to the newly married husband and wife team

If you are feeling this ALBUM then check out Smoke Sessions, Vol. 1 - Devin the Dude it is off tha Chayne his whole album is bangin Agreed with other reviewer Devin is HOT!!!!

If you like American Gangster then you will LOVE.. Smoke Sessions by Devin the Dude. This is one of the best of 2008.