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Even though the sheen of borough unity on “Brooklyn’s Finest”-Jay’s duet with an already ascendant Notorious B.I.G.-masks an undercurrent of one-upmanship between the two. “I basically accepted that I’d be a hustler who happened to rap in his spare time,” the artist born Shawn Carter explains in his 2010 memoir Decoded.Ī New York nativist rejoinder to what the rapper refers to (none too progressively, it should be noted, in the song “22 Two’s”) as “too much West Coast dick licking,” Doubt is nothing if not a showcase for tri-state talent.

A relatively ancient 26-years-old at the time of release, Jay may have piled on the wordplay to stake a claim as the premier freestyle rapper of his generation, but he seems to be fucking around, having fun flexing his newly developed verbal muscle. But then too, it’s an executive precis-the real Blueprint that defined Jay-Z with an inexplicable umlaut over the “Y” before he was the em-dash-abolishing Jay Z-laying out Mafia-inspired homilies, spelling out the “Lexuses/diamond necklaces” lifestyle at the heart of his self-creation myth, and broadcasting his arrival as Jay-Hova: the God MC.ĭespite making the light-speed jump from slinging rocks in Marcy Projects to Big Daddy Kane acolyte/unsigned hype to co-founding Roc-a-Fella Records with Damon Dash and Kareem “Biggs” Burke to releasing Doubt (through a distribution deal with Priority Records) all inside half a dozen years, there is, notably, no whiff of get-rich-or-die-trying to the music. It’s the Brooklyn rapper’s favorite of his own LPs and certainly a landmark effort: a Rosetta Stone for the dope boy triumphalism, trife life storytelling, and aloof cockiness on which Jay has staked his $600 million empire that now spans music and movies, fashion, and booze. Given the debut album’s vaunted place within the rapper’s canonical body of work, however, Reasonable Doubt has come to be remembered as Jay-Z’s grand entrance with guns blazing, even if perception is really an abstraction. 23 on the Billboard album chart (with no single cracking the Top 40), and failing to go platinum until 2002. The CD was more slow burn than barn burner, selling a solid but not exceptional 420,000 units its first year in release, peaking at No. Exactly 20 years ago today, Jay Z’s Reasonable Doubt first impacted at retail and promptly exploded across hip-hop consciousness with the concussive force of an 800-pound bomb.