Everything Is Love, Everything Is Business

20 Jun Everything Is Love, Everything Is Business

EVERYTHING IS LOVE | The Carters | Hip-Hop/Rap | 2018 | 38 Minutes

I should state right off that this is not intended to be a review, even if it might seem something like a review. That said, The Carters are smart. That doesn’t really need to be said, but that’s the best way to start. Beyoncé is better at what she does than most people. On EVERYTHING IS LOVE she does what we expect in that regard, but she also demonstrates that she’s better at rapping than most rappers rapping, including the one to whom she’s married and sharing the byline. And he knows it. I don’t know if I could have predicted that Jay-Z would make a great hypeman, but here we are. Whether or not it’s sincere atonement for his transgressions he’s playing the part and rapping his ass off in the process. He cribs lyrics from Common twice, on “713” [“The Light”] and “LOVEHAPPY” [from Erykah Badu’s “Love of My Life”]. If his lyrics are to be believed it seems that he maybe learned quite a bit that he’s willing to share with and demonstrate to fans, and, more importantly, Beyoncé.

Jay’s supergroup aspiration is realized with this album in a way that didn’t happen with Best of Both Worlds or even Watch the Throne. It sounds like they’ve made the concerted choice to work through their personal issues together and their making music is a bonus byproduct of that decision.  On this project he doesn’t sound like he’s competing at all. He’s complimenting. And he sounds focused, crisp. His verses are [mostly] in the pocket, as if what he has to prove more than anything is that he’s dedicated to making what they create together the best it can be. Her presence on each track feels like she is the main attraction, and everyone understands this fact. I’m assuming this is why it doesn’t sound like a Jay-Z album, but an album featuring Jay-Z. I can’t imagine he cares much about that at this point. What more does he have to prove in his rap career?

This project might be part of rap’s next steps on the popular stage. Hip-Hop Culture continues to expand as it approaches its fifth decade. Artists who’ve lived through it all, who’ve been around since the beginning, are few in number on popular music charts. Somehow Jay-Z continues to challenge our expectations and expand the narrative about rap and rappers’ longevity. I wonder will rap continue to be the Neverland where none of the art reaches adulthood, even if the artists who create it do. Still among the most common intergenerational disses is the one about the old nigga. His opinion is invalidated, we’re led to believe, by his age. He’s out of touch due to circumstances out of his control if he ages. Youth is a virtue only truly possessed by the young. No such expectation necessarily exists for Beyoncé as a rapper. Neither does any kind of rubric for “good” rapping. I can’t even make the claim that such exists for non-Beyoncé rappers, actually, but that might be another topic entirely. I will say, though, that I look forward to the day that rapper-bragging isn’t so heavily reliant upon ownership and access to other people’s bodies and labor. I don’t know if that day will ever come or if what I’m looking for can even exist. As long as rap disses are so dependent upon flaunting excess, ease of attainment, and disposability, it would seem that the way one might signify their goatness is by being better than the best at the game designed for you to lose. In rap, that game is capitalism.    

Nobody plays that game better than The Carters. They have style in spades.  With the production assistance of Pharrell, Cool & Dre, and Boi-1da, and without being walking, talking clickbait, they created a sonically dope album sans Kanye West, whose absence feels like a positive presence. It’s fresh-sounding and varied in all the ways it needs to succeed as a listening experience. It begs the question, “Who needs Wyoming?” So far as substance goes, the album delivers more of what their previous solo offerings gave, with enough pointed lyrical jabs to keep op-ed ink flowing trying to pin down the story to each sub, and as autobiographical as the previous projects, only with “two sides” presented on the current project.

The Carters at The Louvre | Still from “APESHIT” video

By the way, EVERYTHING IS LOVE is a hilarious title for the album version of what was essentially a total eclipse of God’s Son. Nas may or may not have been a victim of friendly fire meant for the G.O.O.D. Music MAGA-producer, but all’s fair in the game of Rap. If the Rap game is like Monopoly, you can depend on old heads to remind you of the time when things were simpler, when the game was actually against private monopolies and it taught its players [and audiences] the ills of such a world. Back then it was called The Landlord’s Game, and even if people wanted what he had, it would be hard to imagine anyone wanting to be Mr. Pennybags. This, too, is what the old heads would say about how they remember it. We all know old heads can be just as insufferable and ahistorical as the new niggas they criticize. But if we accepted those critics’ premise, then EVERYTHING IS LOVE does a great job of humanizing The Pennybags Family and lets us all know that we, too, can and should aspire to be like them though it’s unlikely we will ever achieve their financial success. I don’t see that so much as a critique of The Carters as an astute observation of a certain reality of The Carters’ lives. There is much that can and should be commended and critiqued about this reality on its own but isolating it for the purpose of said critique seems an impossible task if such large parts of the art is constructed with such large pieces of this reality. The entire “Apeshit” video itself, filmed in The Louvre, is ample evidence. But there’s plenty more. In the same video Jay-Z raps, in the world’s largest art museum, his displeasure about his previous album not receiving his art form’s most coveted award, which, in a certain way, is award-worthy to some simply by virtue of his art describing [and prescribing] a life in which such a critique from such a place is even possible.

He once rapped “I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man.”

It’s not only evident The Carters are the business, it’s not really necessary for them to tell us so anymore. But they do. Beyoncé, on “Nice,” rap-sings:

“Patiently waiting for my demise
‘cause my success can’t be quantified.
If I gave two fucks to fucks ‘bout streaming numbers, would’ve put Lemonade up on Spotify.”

Tidal exclusivity for The Carters is as much about them being the business and changing the way business is done for and between businesses as it is about the woes of businesses also apparently being people who, as Beyoncé reminds us on “Boss,” “got problems just like you.” I’m not so sure how that will help the rest of us do business unless we can ultimately become businesses. On the second verse Jay-Z boasts and then castigates:

“Hundred million crib, three million watch—all facts.
No cap, false, nigga. You not a boss. You got a boss.
Niggas getting jerked. That shit hurts. I take it personally.
Niggas would rather work for The Man than to work with me
just to pretend they on my level. That shit irking to me.”

Coaching by chastisement is not a new thing in rap, but it can feel a little off-putting coming from The Pennybags of the world … even if they’re Black. Because they’re Black, it can also be confusing, if not altogether convincing, especially if you know and appreciate their work before they took over the game, when they were describing the world that made them who they were becoming, writing the lives they wished to live. Now, it can sound entirely like they’re spokespeople for a Blackness that’s really more like Diet Whiteness—the same as regular capitalism, only with more flavor! But it’s also the kind of Blackness that says, “get off my dick,” while going apeshit in the Louvre and is “good on any MLK Boulevard.” It’s complicated.  The most earnest-seeming moments work because they don’t feel aimed at dispelling The Carters’ mythos, even if they do. The aphorisms about life and love and friendship, fame, and fortune make The Carters’ story sound like one of [Black] American royalty, along with whatever should be criticized and celebrated about such, and worthy of as much attention we give to people who occupy the public imagination in that way.

For the aforementioned reasons, I enjoy the album. It’s not perfect, but I didn’t expect it to be. I guess I couldn’t have because I didn’t know it existed until it did. I wouldn’t dare christen it a classic, but I will be likely listening to it for a while, taking notes on the game.