Song of the Week: Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z
(download)
"These streets will make you feel brand new." - Alicia Keys
It's the piano riff. The song starts pretty blandly for the first few moments and then that piano riff comes in and builds. What Jay-Z spits on the first verse hardly matters. It's not about that. It's about a feeling. That walking down the street, headphones in, track blasting high, in the world, of the world, making your way. When Alicia belts out the chorus, I'm taken there. It's about the second verse. Hov, like much of The Blueprint 3, doesn't bring the signature inventiveness and wit to this track but there's an emotion in this verse that's fresh. The Jigga man is caught up? In the moment? In his pride for his city? This is genuine adulation and while I'm not from the N-Y, I get it. "Labor Day Parade/Rest-in-Peace to Bob Marley/Statue of Liberty/Long Live the World Trade." What? Parades and monuments? Celebrating things bigger than himself? I'm with it. It's about Alicia. Her passion and strength and joy during the chorus turns this into an anthem. I want to sing out too.It's about loving the place you call home. I complained earlier in the week that Los Angeles isn't these kinds of love letters in sound anymore. Murs reminds us every time he puts out an album but it's not enough. My iPod has been getting filled with hip hop cats of a different era -- N.W.A., Ice Cube, MC Ren, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, DJ Quik, The D.O.C., and Compton's Most Wanted. I'm not hungry for gangsta rap to have a renaissance but I am a little nostalgic for hip hop that celebrates this city in all it's majesty while acknowledging it's faults. This is my home, warts and all. Mr. Carter and Ms. Keys might be performing about the exact opposite of what we've got going on here but I'm head nodding along and thinking of L.A. This is where dreams are made of. There's nothing we can't do.