HIP CHECK - HARD TO WATCH

Let me tell you why I don’t like James Harden. It’s certainly nothing personal. I am not the type of fan to dismiss a player on a few interviews or how they carry themselves or their unfortunate choices in facial hair. A player’s demeanor and attitude can go a long way towards enhancing an already high opinion of their athletic ability and transform them from someone I admire into one of my favorite players, but it is rare that the opposite is true. I try and judge and if need be dislike someone on the field of play purely on the merits of their performance. There are exceptions, where by the accretion of ill will and the need to prove time and again that they totally suck I have indeed written a player or two off––ahem, Dwight Howard––I try to keep this a rare occasion in both life and sport. You really have to earn a spot on my shit list when it comes to personality, and Mr. Harden is assuredly not in that swath of the sporting population.

I dislike Harden purely on the content of his game. He is a deadly three point shooter, a fantastic slasher, an above-average passer, and one of the league’s best all-around scorers. Nothing not to like there. But it is the manner in which he can over and over, within the span of even a single game, make you forget about all of that that really puts me out. That’s because his true primary focus on offense, and hell, in his game as a whole, since he has never shown much interest in defense whatsoever, is doing whatever it takes to get to the free throw line. The ability to draw fouls is part of becoming a complete offensive superstar, but in Harden’s case it does not merely accentuate his talents, it sublimates them into afterthoughts. His knack for getting to the line does not underscore his game, it is what his game is all about. Quite frankly James, you look soft son.

He flops, he flails, he sends his arms and legs akimbo, crashing through the lane like an unconscious sky diver, embellishing every single point of contact made on his way towards the hoop, or more usually, the floor. Half the time, it doesn’t even appear he has designs on putting up a shot, but is driving into the teeth of a defense with the single goal of hearing a referee’s whistle sound. He acts as if fouled so often in fact, I don’t believe most refs know whether or not he actually earned a legitimate call. It’s a cheap way to make an NBA living, and to go about your business as a star player. I question a man as the cornerstone of a franchise and as a leader if he earns his buckets acting his way to the stripe and not hitting shots from the field. Not only that, but the way he plays damages the league as a whole, since the NBA has recently solidified to the casual fan its reputation as a game with less and less watch-ability. 

The greats have always found a way to get to the line, from Jordan to Shaq (most times unwillingly) to Kobe to LeBron, but it has always been a part of their game, and not its centerpiece.

Harden’s position as the poster boy for the NBA’s flop-first shortcomings is often brought into severe focus by active defenses, as was the case on Saturday night, when the Rockets hosted the dazzling Golden State Warriors. Golden State players were in foul trouble early and often, and visibly showed their frustration with near the same frequency as whistles were blown. Phantom contact and questionable calls haunted their defensive efforts, and though they held the Rockets under 40% from the field and Houston seemingly could not buy a bucket, the Warriors still found themselves in an eight point first half hole.

They were outperforming Houston when the clock was running, but got killed at the line time and again, with baffling foul calls that sent Klay Thompson to the bench with two fouls in the blink of an eye, left Stef Curry laughing in disgust, and let Harden continue to score without any ability in the early going to hit a shot. It made me shudder to think what a playoff series between these teams would look like, and brought up memories of the 2006 NBA Finals, which were competitively dismantled by Dwyane Wade’s knack for failing down on every drive into the lane. The Mavericks watched in awe as their series lead evaporated and Wade’s free throw shooting eventually turned the tide of the championship series in Miami’s favor. 

That’s why Harden really burns my toast. He doesn’t just offer up an aesthetically, if not morally lacking form of basketball, he hurts the flow of the game as a whole, creates impossible decisions for referees, and hampers the defensive abilities of what as a whole is a supremely talented defensive league. Instead of a wonderful, up and down, back and forth blur of beautiful basketball, I get feigned attrition and finesse-as-function histrionics wrapped in an ugly looking beard. The cynics can claim what Harden does is within the rules and in fact a brilliant manipulation of the NBA’s status quo, but I didn’t develop a love of sports to be a cynic. I want it to be more than that. I want it to not just entertain me, but delight me. Not only to fill my time, but make that time worthwhile. I want the ballet of basketball performed with grace and tact, not reduced to an ugly grind where I watch one player thrash through a defense and shoot free throws. I don’t want to watch James Harden, that’s for damn sure.

HIP CHECK - HEADS-TO-HEADS

Now that the Monday nighter between the Colts and Giants is in the books and your fantasy football scores are final, week nine of the NFL season is officially on record. With it, so is another round of Manning v. Brady, and like most meetings between the two, Touchdown Tom came out on top. Brady is now 11-5 all-time against his only true under-the-center rival, with the Patriots besting the Broncos 43-21 in Foxboro Sunday afternoon. Of course, the most interesting part of this rivalry is that it isn’t really a rivalry at all in the truest sense of the word. Manning has now QB'd two different teams throughout the showdown’s tenure, and as much as we want it to be, it isn’t a classic one-on-one battle between two athletes in the way it is so often billed.

It certainly isn’t Ali/Frazier or McEnroe/Borg or Palmer/Nicklaus. It’s two football teams playing against each other, not two men squaring off mano a mano. And it’s also why Brady is the clear cut owner of the rivalry. There’s simply too many other variables in the equation when football teams play each other, and the Patriots have been better than the Colts and Broncos near unanimously. The Pats have most always had a better defense, definitely a better coach, and usually more talent spread across both sides of the ball as a whole (this year is probably an exception to that last rule, but I digress). It doesn’t mean that Brady is better than Manning any more than it means that the other Manning brother is better than Brady because he owns two Super Bowl wins against Gisele’s better half. It probably isn’t either of the following, but is definitely more “any given Sunday” than “Tom is better than Peyton.” More “heads-to-heads” than “head-to-head”.

The debate rages about which is better while both keep hurling touchdown passes and will continue until long after they’re both gone from the gridiron, and that’s fine. I just don’t think it’s fair to base their merits on head-to-head showdowns. In reality, the nearest comparison to a sporting rivalry that Manning/Brady brings to mind is Magic Johnson's Lakers and Larry Bird's Celtics in the heyday of the NBA’s resurgence in the 1980’s. But even here, the analogy falls apart. One player in five in your starting lineup goes a lot further towards a distinct comparative advantage than the one in eleven ratio that manifests on a football team. That said, we are in all ways lucky as fans to have witnessed these two go at it each of the sixteen times their teams have met. I often drift into this we-had-it-so-good-in-my-day sort of reverie because it becomes part of what you get to talk about with younger fans as the years roll on. 

That’s right kiddos––I will someday get to say––I got to watch Jordan and LeBron in their prime, dominate two completely different eras of NBA hoops. I got to watch Tiger Woods rule over the game of golf in a way that no one else ever will. I got to watch both Pete Sampras and Roger Federer play tennis, and I still can’t say who’s better. Oh yeah, and I got to watch Tom Brady and Peyton Manning throw the football in the same, amazing era of NFL offensive firepower. When all’s said and done, they might be the two greatest quarterbacks that ever lived, and I was around to watch them both go. Even as they age, their talents remain prodigious, their statistics are still both gaudy and in near all cases record-setting, their mutual respect is unflappable, and their auras perpetually inescapable.

So, who else is ready for meeting number seventeen?

SAM WE ARE

The last post I wrote here at Bo Jackson’s Hip was about Richie Incognito, Jonathan Martin, and what their beef down in Miami told us about the state of pro football. I talked about how they represent two ends of the NFL’s magnet, and that the neutral portion that should be at the center of this gridiron polarity doesn’t really exist in my mind. The NFL is exactly what it has lately tried so hard to tell us it is not: brutal, unforgiving, poignantly meritocratic, and obviously chauvinistic. And while I pilloried NFL brass and meat-headed racists like Richie Incognito for permeating the league’s consciousness, I ended with a glimmer of hope from Brandon Marshall about the humanity that the NFL has never really had, and what it might take to make it manifest.

You might go back and read all of that if you want (or the vivid, ugly report that was just released on the whole matter), or just wonder why I followed a path from one football controversy to the next, without even sniffing the Super Bowl, and you might be justified in your criticism. But if you watched that game, come on. What can I say? The Seahawks thumped the Broncos with stellar defense, Peyton Manning shrunk in a big game, and it doesn’t do anything to take away from his legacy as one of the greatest football players of all time. Well, I guess I could have said that, but with a lot more words and links, and videos and what not. But I’m not going to. I’m going to skip the big game and pick up where I left off: with a controversy that calls into question exactly what football is, what it tells us about ourselves as fans, and how it might mirror the American culture at large. I’m headed straight from knuckle-headed bullies and a big guy who had enough of them in Miami to an even pricklier question that arose last week from the heartland.

Missouri defensive end and co-SEC Defensive Player of the Year Michael Sam announced publicly to the New York Times and ESPN that he is a gay man. He told us all what he told his teammates and coaches earlier last summer, before the college football season even started: that he is out, and proud, and gay. The small miracle is that his teammates had enough discretion, loyalty, and respect for Sam’s decision to come out that they went all the way up until last week without saying a word publicly about it. They let Sam do that for himself. The larger miracle is that the NFL, already pushing away the clouds of doubt about concussions and brain injury and human carnage, already trying to wash away the stains of Bounty Gate and Richie Incognito, and still swiping at the less-important dusting of Richard Sherman’s unsportsmanlike exuberance, finds itself thrown into an all new imbroglio that most of us thought was still several years down the line.

Michael Sam is too talented not to be taken in this coming April’s 2014 NFL Draft, and will thus become the first openly gay athlete in the four major American sports. While Jason Collins was indeed courageous and paved the way for Sam’s reveal when he told Sports Illustrated that he was gay, it was while he was an unemployed, and as is the case now, former NBA player. For whatever reason, be it age, a lack of productivity, or perhaps, his sexuality, Collins has not landed on an NBA roster this season. And he probably won’t. And he probably won’t next year. So he is a former player coming out for all intents and purposes, joining others in this honorable line, though his landmark decision to tell the world about his sexual preference stands out as the ladder upon which Michael Sam found the courage to climb up and do just the same. 

Like Collins, Sam isn’t a current professional athlete. While Collins essentially was, Sam most certainly will be. And here, for this writer, is where this young man’s story becomes not only historic and important and brave, but utterly fascinating. Sam, whether you think his intentions were to do so or not, has become the ultimate test case for the gay American athlete, and even more intriguingly, the gay American football player. Sam is poised to become the sporting version of that ideal that Dr. King gave us so many years ago: a man judged not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character. In this case, not the orientation of his sexuality, but his prowess on a football field. If it seems too heavy-handed to invoke the civil rights movement and one of the most transcendent activists the world has ever seen, it speaks both to Dr. King’s very transcendence and brings us to a small but important hurdle that must be cleared before moving on to the real dilemma that Sam creates. To put it simply: Michael Sam is not Jackie Robinson.

While it feels only natural to draw parallels between the Civil Rights Movement in mid-twentieth century America and our most obvious civil rights issue today, gay equality, this is a clear case of apples and oranges. Jackie Robinson was a prime example of an already existent pool of talent that was being kept out of the highest level of competition available. It isn’t that Jackie Robinson came out to the country as a black man, it’s that black men weren’t allowed to play baseball in the Major Leagues until he and Branch Rickey came along. They challenged a gentleman’s [sic] agreement between baseball owners that black players would not find a place on a Major League roster. The stakes were much higher, Jackie faced a level of abuse that Michael Sam will not likely see the edges of, and the cause was of an entirely different variety. Jackie Robinson is the apotheosis of American courage, so we should not so easily throw other men into his company.

This is not said to take something away from Michael Sam, but more to not take anything away from Jackie Robinson. It’s an important point that was discussed on what is probably the smartest podcast in sports, Slate’s Hang Up and Listen, last Monday, and one that I was already making internally before the sharp trio behind HUAL verbalized it in their weekly address to the sporting world. The truth is, there have already been and currently are gay athletes in the four major American sports, which we can assume from innuendo and know from first-hand accounts. Sam’s proclamation and assertion of the value of his lifestyle and character are thrilling and evident, but they are not the same thing as what Jackie Robinson did for baseball, black and white American athletes, and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. Not to mention that Jackie is one of the greatest baseball players of all time, not just a trailblazer. So let’s just stop making what Jackie Robinson did during and after his career part of this issue. Let’s let Sam’s announcement exist as its own colossal step forward for football, sports, and a loud defiance of backward beliefs in conservative creations like the sanctity of marriage and the maintenance of the accepted view of what an American family should look like. 

With that all behind us, or at least me, let’s move on to the very present and very telling realities that Sam’s story has and will continue to illuminate. It all goes back to what I said before about Sam as the ultimate test case. My intent is not to strip his announcement of any of its import by looking at it through an overly clinical lens, but simply to peer at him the exact same way the NFL and its 30 general managers are as we speak. From what a couple of GM’s and execs have told reporters (under the safe umbrella of anonymity of course), Sam’s draft stock might take a hit because of his sexuality. Because he’s now a “distraction” for any team he would join, both internally in the locker room and externally to the members of the media that would likely hound Sam and his teammates. Of course, as a couple of members of the media have deftly pointed out, this is a complete load of BS. Please enjoy both clips, and then kindly join me after the jump. And shouts to Deadspin for the heads up on the first vid.

As Mr. Hansen and Mr. Stewart expertly point out, the NFL is full of miscreants and convicted or suspected criminals of varying degrees, and their distractions didn’t seem to stop anyone from signing them up to play football on Sundays. In fact, quite the opposite, as these less-than-rare controversies have and will continue to melt away faster than snowballs in springtime. If these are the very controversies that our aforementioned GM’s and executives are pointing towards, they have already been proven wrong. It’s why Sam’s sexuality is a different kind of litmus test. If he falls in the draft, it won’t be because he’s undersized or lacks the physical traits to be a great pro, or that there are questions about his character, rather it will be because of bald bigotry and clear narrow-mindedness. It will be because no matter how many states continue to legalize gay marriage––and despite politicians on both sides of the aisle in congress supporting equal rights for homosexuals, bisexuals, and transgender Americans––football, and the entire country, still can’t get on board. It will be because the NFL and the bulk of the American population are choosing to be on the wrong side of history.

Like the women's movement and the battle against Jim Crow, which once begun would not be denied, the victory for those advocating for gay rights is already written on the walls of the United States of America. The gay rights train is barreling down the tracks, with the NFL and conservative America powerless to stop it. The fact that they might try will be yet another black eye for football, and a lesson in the fact that while progress is inevitable, there will always be those that try and slow its pace. Michael Sam is an at least capable and perhaps dynamic talent on the football field, and anyone that chooses to overlook that is making a mistake. They are making a mistake intellectually, spiritually, and in the case of an NFL team that passes on him, a mistake about doing what it takes to make their football team better. Maybe, like the experts seem to think, Sam is a mid-round pick. Maybe he won’t be watched by a camera on draft day with a million dollars trailing him to the stage, or even on the next day of the 2014 draft, but that really doesn’t matter. He is destined to be the first openly gay athlete to be drafted into the NFL and play professional football, and no one can take that away from him.

But if our beloved game of football is too pig-headed and myopic to accept and celebrate Michael Sam, and he inexplicably slips lower and lower in the draft, it will say a lot about the current state of gay, bisexual, and transgender rights in the United States. Sports have an uncanny way of both projecting upon and reflecting the national opinion, and as such, this young man’s professional fate is tied to our own national character. Let’s hope that not just one, but several NFL teams are lined up to swoop Sam off of the draft board, and that the league and the rest of us can continue to take pride in our differences as people, and as a result advocate for the freedoms that are at the heart of the American identity. 

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

If one examines the arc of a headline sports story in the early 21st century, it usually proves to be a roller coaster worthy curve. I'm not talking one of those old corkscrew numbers with twists and turns–though at times those stories do abound–but more like the big ticket thrill rides that find us starting off at ground level and soaring to unimaginable heights in the sky. Layers of meaning and effect are added, more and more information leaks out as we climb, and before long, we're at the peak of the first hill, looking out and over the landscape of sports wondering what the hell made us think it would be fun to hang this high in the air, where our perspective is out of wack and the slow ascent that brought us this far from the ground doesn't even register in memory. 

This analogy is particularly apt when it comes to the ongoing saga of the 2013 Miami Dolphins, who right now must be wondering exactly how terrifying the drop from the top of this story’s hill is going to be. A couple weeks back, I'm sure the players, coaches and fans in South Beach wouldn't have dared imagine a media circus so large and two of their offensive lineman in its center ring, but that as they say, is where we're at right now. When news surfaced that the Dolphins’ Jonathan Martin had left the team indefinitely to deal with a personal issue, the ripple along the sporting pond was minuscule. But we quickly learned that Martin, who has an anecdotal history of mental duress and a (gasp!) Stanford education backed up by intellectual parents, wasn't leaving his teammates behind for no good reason. The man his teammates affectionately call ‘Big Weirdo’ was stepping away because he had flat had enough of the less-than-genial treatment his fellow Dolphins were apt to hand out. Rookie hazing is one thing, but bullying and harassing a second year guy right out of town is another all together, and from what Martin sez (sorry, reading the new Pynchon right now) and his camp continues to leak, this isn’t just some gentle ribbing.

We found out the straw that broke the lineman's back was when high school cafeteria style, a table full of teammates got up and left when Martin took a seat with them for a team meal. That knucklehead move aside, Martin also spoke to consistent mistreatment by his fellow Dolphins, having to chip in 15K on a jaunt to Vegas he didn’t even go on, continued hazing into his second year in the league, a general disregard for his dislike for such treatment, all culminating in the release of text messages and voice mails from Richie Incognito, the embattled Dolphins vet who called Martin a half-nigger, said he'd shit in the young man's mouth, and polished it off by saying he was going to kill him. 

Incognito, despite his name's import, is a fairly conspicuous miscreant. How’s this for a brief career summation: being suspended from and then essentially kicked off the Nebraska football team, transferring to Oregon where he was dismissed within a week's time, ending up on what Tony Dungy called several NFL teams' DNDC (Do Not Draft because of Character) lists, eventually drafted by St. Louis, racking up so many fines and personal foul penalties with the Rams in five years that he was summarily cut, followed by a cup of coffee in Buffalo, which led him to finally land in the mess he's made in Miami. He's a serial punk who once trash talked Antonio Smith into ripping Incognito's helmet off, then attack him with it. Just the kind of guy I'd want molding my team's young linemen. Good grief. And check the GIF:

But being surprised by Incognito's behavior is akin to surprise that members of a ballet troupe have rhythm. It's part of a football player's job description to be tough and to an extent, unruly–Incognito being at the extreme (and additionally racist) end of this bruising spectrum. And hazing, if you want to call it institutionalized or not, is also part of the game, especially at preseason training camp, the place where a team takes shape, bonds, and teammates spend most of their waking moments together. Did Incognito take it too far? Yes he did. But to what extent we'll never really know. Beyond the racial overtones, the Dolphins’ group dynamic is for the most part unknown to all of us who don’t strap on a helmet every Sunday in the fall. I can't speak to what is and isn't acceptable behavior in Miami, any more than you can. Incognito may be an abusive (ahem, racist) outlier, but is also an example of the nature of the NFL beast. The league just doesn't want to admit it. They want to condemn tough guy behavior and hits to the head, and yet promote an image of concern and commitment to player safety, the latter of which is done with a huge wink and a neck breaking nod. The NFL is one thing, says it's another, and has to decide at some point what the actual realities on and off the field really are.  

But again, we should certainly not be surprised. Football is the manliest game among the manly American sports. It’s full of jocks, tough guys, and varying degrees of dickhead, so why does a guy like Richie Incognito and his treatment of someone like Jonathan Martin, strike anyone as odd? The brash bully putting the screws to the aloof nerd is a story as old as time itself, and on a football team? Of course this kind of bullshit goes on. The difference here, and the reason the story has now gained traction with not only the sports media, but also national news outlets, is that it pushes hot button issues in America. Race is the third rail of any news story, but when combined with money, fame, the most popular game in the country, and bullying–a topic du jour on the internet and beyond–the headlines not only grow in size, but reach out to ever more ears and eyeballs. 

While the character types and plot movements in this story are nothing if not unoriginal, and play to the current national conscience surrounding bullying and the manufactured specter of wussification, what the Dolphins are dealing with tells us more about is what it’s like to be a professional football player. Race is the undercard to the main event of football’s ridiculous warrior mentality and the bullies and jerks it manufactures.  

That’s because the racial aspect is easy to identify and condemn: anyone that uses the language that Incognito did is a racist first and fool second. We can all agree on that. But what the story says about football’s culture and overall aesthetic is where the real intrigue lies. It’s a league where by all accounts thoughtful, at times sensitive young athletes like Jonathan Martin are bullied off of teams made up of men who do nothing but defend his primary bully as soon as both are out the door. A league that saw fit to severely punish the perpetrators behind Bounty Gate, but is itself exposed in a book and accompanying documentary as categoric deniers of the repercussions of head injuries. A league in which it is now near-criminal to target another player’s head, but top brass continue to push for an 18-game season and Thursday night double-headers, only increasing the level of carnage. Plain and simple, it is a league that wants to have its brutal cake and eat it too, and for every nice guy like Tony Gonzalez or Arian Foster, there are five more that are closer in temperament to Richie Incognito. 

The story of Jonathan Martin is sad and telling at the end of the day. It’s sad that Richie Incognito, who is clearly a dick, and evidently a racist (he also called Warren Sapp that famous n-word, on the playing field no less, according to the former Tampa Bay Buccaneer), can lead his teammates in pushing around a young athlete with his whole career still in front of him. It’s sad that after that, his teammates and other players lined up to support the bully, and not the victim. It’s sad that the NFL is a place where this sort of thing still goes on, and it’s sad that we’re surprised that it does. Football is violent, the men who play it are intense, possibly performance-drug-addled hired guns, and it is a boys’ club to the Nth degree. As fans, we love it because of these very facts–the way we like action movies and violent video games and books of the very same nature. I previously opined on why my love for football is giving me all kinds of misgivings lately, but more than ever I’m even more tired of the NFL’s two-faced rationale. They don’t want to clean their room, they want to shove everything into the closet when the media happens to check in. Deep down, the powers that be in football know that its manly, violent aura is its bread and butter, and they can’t continue to put lipstick on a pig(skin) and tell us it’s a pretty girl.

And of course, we haven't even mentioned what the coaching staff and front office in Miami knew, but to a lot of folks, it feels like yes, indeed, they did order the Code Red. And if they didn't know about any of this, that's even worse. An NFL team should know its own stripes, and whether or not they change, and I'm pretty sure the Dolphins do in this case. Because while a guy like Incognito–or another recent headline stirrer Brandon Meriweather–is deplorable, at least Meriweather seems to be in on the league’s sick joke that he’s exactly the kind of monster the NFL creates. Don’t just take it from me though, the fan and observer, or Meriweather, the perennial headhunter, take it instead from Chicago Bears wide receiver and league veteran Brandon Marshall. When asked about the situation in his former NFL home of Miami, he summed things up thusly:

"Take a little boy and a little girl. A little boy falls down and the first thing we say as parents is ‘Get up, shake it off. You’ll be OK. Don’t cry.’ When a little girl falls down, what do we say? ‘It’s going to be OK.’ We validate their feelings. So right there from that moment, we’re teaching our men to mask their feelings, don't show their emotions. And it’s that times 100 with football players. You can’t show that you're hurt, you can’t show any pain. So for a guy to come into the locker room and he shows a little vulnerability, that’s a problem. That’s what I mean by the culture of the NFL. And that’s what we have to change.” – via Deadspin via the Chicago Tribune

What Brandon Marshall so succinctly points out and what this roller coaster of a story in Miami continues to accentuate is that football cannot walk the line between rigorous physical attrition and tough-guy BS and politically correct, media-friendly exhibitions of contrition. The NFL has to decide if it is more Richie Incognito or Jonathan Martin. More bully, or victim. Because in the eyes of this writer, no real truth lay between.

THE BLACK-ER ALBUM

After a series of false starts (no athletic pun intended) on a variety of sporty topics, I’ve decided to write a post here at Bo Jackson’s Hip that isn’t about sports at all. I started and stopped posts about Jason Collins coming out of the closet, Tim Tebow moving to New England, and most recently, the two epic collapses we saw in Game 6 of the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final. But none of those topics materialized into something interesting to read, so I’ve scrapped all of that and decided to flex a different linguistic muscle.

In lieu of sports, this post’s focus is Jay-Z, and more specifically his new long player, Magna Carta Holy Grail. Rap music, and Mr. Carter himself, pop up all the time during my posts about sports, so trust me when I say that though this post isn’t about sports, it's still Bo Jackson's Hip.

This isn’t exactly a review of Magna Carta Holy Grail, but more a discussion of it in relation to Jay-Z’s close to two-decade-long career. I’m not a music critic, but still want to examine what the new album says about him and his position in the music industry and the American culture at large. I probably wouldn’t be suited to review a Jay-Z album because of my devotion to his catalogue and belief that he is perhaps the greatest MC of all time, but ironically I do feel suited to talk about what the album and its artist mean in a broader sense. The album is a statement about Jay-Z’s role as a black success story in white America, a hyperbolic but fairly accurate representation of his cultural influence, his navigation of fame’s complex gauntlet, and of course–because he’s still a rapper at the end of the day–the fact that he’s a much better MC than the rest of these lyrical crumbsnatchers.

The first track, “Holy Grail”, features a soulful Justin Timberlake delivering perhaps the performance of his career, and acts as a potent thesis statement for the remainder of the album. It is a song about the trappings of fame, and about Jay-Z's continued escapability. It references black figures that have squandered their wealth like MC Hammer and Mike Tyson, and a white musician who buckled under the fierce gaze of the public eye in Kurt Cobain. A brief melodic and lyrical sampling from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" finds Jay and Justin Timberlake re-working Nirvana's bombastic entry into the mainstream, shifting "here we are now, entertain us" into "and we all just, entertainers." The song and much of the album assert that Jay-Z is near immune to the serious damage that fame can do to an individual, and contains some of Magna Carta Holy Grail's other recurring themes: Jay-Z's position as an influential black American, the responsibility that comes with this power, and his still heavy influence on rap music.

From jump street, I’m buying it. That’s because I believe that Jay-Z means something in America, the same way that Michael Jordan means something, or James Brown means something, or Ernest Hemingway means something, or Orson Welles means something.

Or Muhammad Ali means something.

The boxer is mentioned several times on MCHG (I’m already tired of typing that whole damn thing out), and like Jean-Michel Basquiat, is a continued referential and reverential touchstone. While Jay-Z has never stood up for a cause the way Ali did in his refusal to enter the draft, or spent time in jail for this and his religious convictions, I still think the Ali references are merited. I don’t know that any athlete has ever transcended his own sport to fascinate and inspire both America and the global community the way Muhammad Ali has, and I don’t think that another ever will. Jay-Z no doubt sees himself in a similar light, and while some may call that a typical display of egoism for the rapper, I for one can at least see why he has so much admiration for the champ. Like Ali, Jay’s the greatest, and he’s black, and motherfuckers have to deal with that. Just take a look at the references to the Louisville Lip from MCHG:

Just let me be great, just let me be great

I feel like mothafuckin' Cassius Clay right now, genius!

Muhammad Hovi, my back against the ropes
the black Maybach, I'm back inside the boat

America tried to emasculate the greats

Murder Malcolm, gave Cassius the shakes

Wait, tell them rumble young man rumble

Like the greatest heavyweight of all time became more than just a fighter, Jay-Z has become something beyond an artist. This is evident in his move outward into business as the former CEO of Def Jam and current CEO of Roc Nation, and in his co-ownership of the Nets, where he was the driving force behind the NBA team’s move from New Jersey to Brooklyn. And recently, his foray into athlete representation (he’s off to a nice start) forced him to move up and move on, ceding his stake in the NBA franchise that now calls his home-borough home. He’s done all of this while joining into a high-profile marriage with perhaps the most well-known female artist in music since Madonna, Beyoncé Knowles, only increasing an already large pop-cultural cache. Like Ali, this has happened with, for want of a better word, his blackness intact. In the same way that Muhammad Ali’s race wasn’t an aspect of his fame, but inseparable from it, Jay-Z has always been not only prideful of his status as a black American, but intentionally unquiet about what it means in the context of our culture.

This personal motivation, which goes back to his emergence from retirement with 2006’s Kingdom Come, is now a sharpened weapon the rapper wields regularly in response to his critics, an upstart generation of rappers, and frankly anyone who doubts his capabilities. Like Ali, Jay-Z’s confidence, style, and fearlessness are a charismatic combination that captivate the culture as a whole–not just fans of sports or music. Kingdom Come was a warning shot to younger rappers that the king of New York was back, The Blueprint 3 was a continuation of that theme, but also a reminder that even as he aged, Jay-Z was still a forward thinking mainstream artist sonically and topically, and his shared effort with Kanye West, Watch the Throne, was a flag-planting ceremony that decided to forego subtlety in favor of a celebration of the black wealth, power, and influence that both men have cultivated. (In between all of that great music was a spur-of-the-moment classic called American Gangster inspired by the film of the same name. It is a deft exploration of the similarities he found in the story of drug dealer Frank Lucas, but I digress...). And of course, it was Jay-Z who brought Kanye along lo those many years ago, when the kilt-wearing media hound was still rocking brightly colored polo shirts and a backpack on stage (I know, I was there on that first tour, but more on ‘Ye in just a moment...).

By following his farewell to the game, The Black Album (can’t be much clearer than that album title) with Kingdom Come, The Blueprint 3, Watch the Throne, and now Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay-Z’s statement to the music industry and America as a whole about his status as an artist and a black success story in the United States has been, in order: “I’m back”, “I’m the future”, “I matter”, and now, “I’m not finished”.

With, MCHG Jay-Z proves himself smarter, stronger, and bent on expanding his breadth of influence and financial prowess. Unlike Ali, and his rap contemporaries the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, Jay intends to flourish into middle age and work towards injecting a bit of melanin into the lily-white power structure of the United States, which fittingly is now run by a man of mixed white and black blood. After all, as Jay already told us, he himself is a “small part of the reason the president is black.”

And while many assessments of MCHG and Jay-Z’s other recent output point out that the MC is stuck in a “I’m richer than you are” rut, I would argue that his eloquence on the mic is only increasing, and that while his words have begun to ring a familiar bell, like a great novelist Jay-Z is performing deft variations on a theme. His entire career arc can almost be summed up in just one of his most memorable lines: “from Marcy to Madison Square”. He has risen from a low-level street hustler in a Brooklyn housing project to be one of the richest men in entertainment and now to be a multi-dimensional business man who lunches with Warren Buffett and visits with the president.

I’d pound that message home too if I were him.

No wonder that pre-MCHG, Jay-Z’s last appearance on record was a contribution to the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the The Great Gatsby. Like Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Shawn Carter is a stranger in a strange (read: rich) land, with a wealth initially built on criminal behavior that has exploded into a legitimate rise into the upper class. A place where not only do the two Jays seemingly not belong, but must struggle with the old guard of American wealth’s dated ideas about what it means to be rich and powerful. And again, like Ali, B.I.G., Tupac, and Jay Gatsby, Jay-Z refuses to let this life batter him into submission. He will not succumb to figurative and literal beatings, or a fictional or actual death at the hands of his fame and wealth.

The album's intent is reinforced just before halftime with "Somewhere in America", a triumphant tune that serves as prelude to further explorations of the rapper's self-perceived and actual impact. The next three songs embellish "Somewhere"'s vibe and attitude, as "Crown", "Heaven" and the brief but powerful "Versus" take lethal aim at anyone who would dare sell Jay-Z short. This is all done atop the varyingly lush and sparse production of Timbaland, whose near-continuous presence on the album gets assists from J-Roc, Pharrell, Boi-1da, Hit Boy, and The Dream. Conspicuously absent from that list of who's-who producers is Kanye West, whom Jay-Z seems intent on putting in his place. Lyrical shout-outs to Kanye's Yeezus pop up from time to time, and the album seems to be a reminder to Kanye that he is still the Pippen to Jay-Z's Jordan.

With his latest release, Kanye West decided to be so direct in his assessment of himself as a powerful black man that the album borders on parody, while Jay-Z foregoes Yeezy’s hatchet in favor of the scalpel. Kanye titles a song “I Am a God”, on an album called Yeezus while Jigga starts “Crown” with a boastful line in the spirit of rap tradition: ‘You in the presence of a king/scratch that, you in the presence of a god.’ This couplet is in line with the Five-percent Nation’s belief in the black man as god on earth, which is also referenced in “Heaven”, with Jay saying: “Arm, leg, leg, arm, head - this is God body/Knowledge, wisdom, freedom, understanding - we just want our equality.” The Five-percenters take ALLAH as an acronym for arm, leg, leg, arm, head and consider the knowledge of self as an ultimate pursuit.

Jay-Z has a baby with Beyoncé. Kanye has a baby with Kim. Nuff said. Also Magna Carta (Carter) is a much better play on words than Yeezus (Yeezy/Jesus), just sayin’.

Kanye can’t seem to get out of his own ego’s way. He turned what is an important and at times breathtaking sonic contribution to the mainstream of rap in Yeezus into a trite black (mogul) power manifesto. Contrastingly, Jay-Z expertly walks the line between pop artist and black difference-maker, enabling him to deliver his message with a stealthy vigor, and also more effectively than his protege. The album as a whole, from promotion to execution, are a not-so-subtle reminder to Mr. West of where he got his swagger from. While Kanye stirs up a commotion with an arrogant projection of his new video on the side of a building, Jay-Z debuts his album art next to the real Magna Carta. While Kanye strips his record of artistic packaging altogether and doesn’t mind when it leaks to the web early, Jay-Z makes a game-changing move in the age of the download by guaranteeing his record’s platinum status through a million-copy deal with Samsung.

In both content and context, Kanye comes off as a child screaming for attention, while Jay-Z asserts himself as a grown man that everyone notices when he walks into a room.

Yet through all of this chest-puffing, name-dropping (one song on MCHG is called “Tom Ford” for chrissakes), and money-counting, the introspective version of Jay-Z is still the star of the album. Frank Ocean, who joins the MC on the aptly titled “Oceans”, brings out the same Jay-Z he lured forward in Watch the Throne’s “Made In America”. Recognizing his fame and the small odds of his success, he says ‘If it wasn't for these pictures they wouldn't see me at all/Aww, whole world's in awe/I crash through glass ceilings, I break through closed doors.’ Likewise, in “Jay-Z Blue”, he addresses a near-maniacal urge to shelter his new daughter from public torment, sampling Mommie Dearest dialogue and giving us lines like: ‘Now I got my own daughter/taught her how to take her first steps/cut the cord watch her take her first breath/and I’m trying and I’m lying if I said I wasn’t scared.’

A rapper telling you about his fatherly fears is one thing, but when he goes on to talk about how stoked he is about his wife, things really get anti-rap-establishment. What might sound like a cheesy premise for a song is actually anything but, and the modern-day New Jack Swing of “Part II (On The Run)” ends up being a sincere duet with Beyoncé and a sure-fire future hit single. The look inward continues at album’s end, with “Nickels and Dimes”, a last exploration of Jay’s career-spanning theme: his rise from poverty to power. In this fitting closer, he is at once both unsure of his status: ‘I cut myself today to see if I still bleed/success is so sublime/gotta do that time to time so I don’t lose my mind/something ‘bout the struggle so divine/this sort of love is hard to define’ and still clearly comfortable with his self-given title as the best rapper alive: ‘Like Magic in his prime when Kareem sky hooked/Y’all not worthy, sometimes I feel like y’all don’t deserve me, my flow unearthly.’

Just to get all Decoded on your ass real quick, let’s take a look at Jay-Z’s talent on the mic from just those last two songs.

After he hijacks Juvenile’s cadence and flow in “Part II” , bouncing along with: ‘Touch a nigga where his rib at/I click clat/push your motherfuckin’ wig back/I did that’ the next line is about how he’s ‘been wilding since a juvi’. No one makes you listen close like Jay-Z. Not convinced? How about those “Nickels and Dimes” lines, where throwing in the word “worthy” (as in worthiness and James Worthy) after referencing Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabar is the kind of subtle double entendre other rappers just can’t mimic. It’s next-level wordplay that only Shawn Carter seems capable of delivering without beating you over the head with its cleverness–a trait so many new MC’s lack. Toss in the fact that the internal rhyme from that other line in “Nickels”–sublime/time to time/lose my mind–would make Rakim blush and you have a record that just made a bunch of youngsters trolling Rap Genius lose their collective minds.

Magna Carta Holy Grail is a statement on fame, a message to the white establishment, and a vivid reminder to MCs everywhere about who’s still on top. Jay-Z wants you take away a sense of his prominence as a wealthy black man in America, but at the end of the day he still can’t resist sonning a few more rappers before it’s all said and done. MCHG is an example of Jay-Z at his lyrical best, and an example of an artist who is distinctly aware of his own influence and ability.

It’s Magna Carta, the magnum opus...it’s Picasso, baby.