Written by Matthew Trammell

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"H to the Izzo" - Jay Z

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A few years ago, after COVID started, but not too long after, I started listening to Jay Z and Memphis Bleek’s “Coming of Age” in the morning. I first heard Reasonable Doubt on a television set, via BCAT, a public-access channel that used to air in Brooklyn in the early 2000s. One day, flipping through the channels, I stumbled upon someone playing “Can I Live” on the station behind static channel graphics. There was so much depth. Listening to music on a television had always felt like the lowest form of listening possible, kind of like playing things on laptop speakers today. But there was something different about the experience.

I knew who Jay Z was, but hadn’t heard any of his old music. Back then, he was best known among me and my cousins, god-siblings, and elementary grade friends for his techy collaborations with Swizz Beats and the Ruff Ryders. Tracks like “Jigga My N***a,” and “Jigga What, Jigga Who” got us hyped at summer camp. “Hard Knock Life,” “Big Pimpin,” “Give It To Me”—these songs already felt commercial. “U Don’t Know” was ill for sure, and we passed CD players back and forth with bootleg Hot 97 mixtapes to play it over and over again. But for the most part, it was like, Jay Z is the biggest, but he isn’t always the best. This is why hearing “Can I Live” for the first time that day, was so confusing. 

Here was money-obsessed, Crystal popping Jay Z rapping on a deep jazz loop about being frustrated, stressed, lost—the guy whose catchphrase was “I will not lose” was talking about losing. How was this possible? Where was this coming from? The track hypnotized me. I eventually learned that this was a song from his first album, released before he was rich and famous. It actually introduced me to the idea of an artist's “first album”—that they might have things to say on their debut that they’ll never say again, and take risks they might never take again. Soon after, I bought a real copy of “Reasonable Doubt” from a store on Church Avenue that sold New Era caps and catalog rap albums—and that’s largely where my self education in music began. 

There were other classics that I liked way more, other artists whose work I better related to. But over the years, Reasonable Doubt became a sort of palette cleanser. For some reason, it serves as a reset. In New York, it’s like a Christmas album, an annual listen that often has to do to cold weather. I think lots of people have this relationship with it. There’s something in the quality of the record that makes you like different parts of it at different parts in your life, and grow with it as you grow yourself. 

“Coming of Age” was produced by DJ Clark Kent, and loops out a piano refrain from 1976’s “Inside You,” by Eddie Henderson. The flip is minimal, and Jay-Z’s track is pretty much faithful to Henderson’s original composition. In a 2007 episode of the BBC music-doc series “Classic Albums,” Clark Kent remembers the session in which the song was created: 

[Jay] walked in and heard this while it was being made, and was like “I want that.” I was like, “I’m not finished, I’m gonna add some drums and do a couple of other things." And he was like, "No. Leave it just the way it is. I want it just like that.”

I play Reasonable Doubt from my Bluetooth Bose Mini Soundlink speaker while I take my shower. The speaker, which I’ve had since college, has always made me feel at home. 

That’s because it brings me back to bass. Bass has been a part of my home since childhood. Low end meant that songs were heard, not just played. We had other ways to get background noise. I had a small radio in my childhood bedroom and little clock radios littered the house, sound sources hissing with the static of terrestrial radio broadcasts, passively filling the air’s silence with the latest tunes. But when it came time to bump something for real—albums or mixtapes for Sunday cleaning or family company—we took our CDs and cassettes to the big stereos and stand-alone speakers,

I started to believe that bass communicated an artist’s intentions more wholly. Three-foot tall speakers that stood on the floor floated songs from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill or by the Jackson 5 into our living room. An education happened: I learned the difference between a single and an album, the way an album flows, how artists evolve across their catalog. I noticed  that old stuff contained secrets unavailable on the daily countdowns of radio and MTV. 

And the large speakers seemed to seal the promise of our four enclosed walls: that we were at home now, bound into a unit generally known and recognized as a family. Laptop speakers contain sounds that feel unavoidable, a fact of modern life. Apple tried to simulate bass with my MacBook Air’s thin strips of speaker holes, ducking sound out where depth should be. But it’s really not the same. 

But my Bose speaker is where I can come close to the old bass of home. It’s smaller and more portable, which feels apt for where I’m at. I’m independent, free to stretch out and shape my own space, but still mindful not to venture too far away from the source of the signal.

Today, we hear what Jay heard. A simple, beautiful loop of keys from the piano’s lowest end. Something about the song has aged remarkably well.

The whole album is overcast, but “Coming of Age” zeroes in on the melancholy, almost giving heart and soul to the pursuit of capital. I usually start it while I’m in motion, already up and active, and I have to start it right at the beginning—I need the very first note for the experience to be ideal. The song echoes and ricochets off my old bathroom’s pink tiles, which themselves look like an ill relic from someone’s old life in the 70s. 

The water takes its time heating up, and I mentally ease into the start of what feels like a great battle, both somber and enlivening. By the time the drums drop and the streak of violin hits, my mind turns to images of gray overcoats and suitcases swish-swashing into the caverns of Manhattan’s financial districts. Yes, the song does remind me of the movie Wall Street (1987) in that way. There are even narrative parallels: an eager, ambitious youth maneuvers under the wing of a towering boss figure, who sees himself in the lad and offers his guidance through a treacherous business and the riches it promises.

Much has been said and written about Jay-Z and the excess and greed he may or may not represent. Reasonable Doubt is a capitalist text. He perfected this zone on his next album’s “Imaginary Players”; his primary practice at this stage of his career was to capture the weightless feeling of the moment right after the win. In his later years, he’s seemed to repent: notably on 4:44, where he winces at his young spending habits and missed opportunity for more meaningful investment, and more nakedly on the underrated A Written Testimony, with Jay Electronica, where he finally, unabashedly relishes his Five Percenter sympathies and offers a spiritual, militant retrofitting of his ascension. 

But there is something eternal about the aspirations captured on Reasonable Doubt. It feels edgy yet classy, subtle but singular.  For me, it’s come to feel less like an album than a wristwatch: a part of my morning routine I have to remember to put on or the rest of the day feels off. So I shower and let the album keep playing, through the sexist wince of “Cashmere Thoughts,” the deep awe of “Bring It On,” and the weathered wisdom of “Regrets.” There are two bonus tracks, made more accessibleby the streaming era: “Can I Live II,” which is horrible, and “Can’t Knock The Hustle [Fool’s Paradise Remix],” which is incredible. One line on the latter usually catches my ear by the time I’m drying off: “Ever since I retired, working ‘longside of live-wires/ to this rap biz, with fake nigs, you know—liars.” 

It’s funny to think about Jay-Z retiring from drug-dealing at twenty-six, and being aghast by the kind of character he finds in the rap industry by contrast. I’m a Repeat All kind of guy; the album starts back at the top just around when I’m getting dressed, with Mary J Blige consoling that one's hustle cannot in fact be knocked, try as they might. 

I’ve been in my place for a few years now, in Flatbush not far away from my childhood home. At 33, I have just started to actually feel at home in my apartment, versus in some non-specific rental I’ve gotten as a result of getting a job. Listening to “Coming of Age” in the morning is part of the daily decisions I’m allowed to make every day, for myself, as an adult. A career as a journalist and artist-helper in the music industry has been hard fought and earned, and now other goals have started to creep in: what is the shape of my life outside of work? Where does the future lead? These are the questions Reasonable Doubt makes me feel, for some reason, more equipped to answer. 

Many of my friends are in similar life stages—some are building homes with partners, and others have even had children, little roommates they’ve created for themselves that they have to clean, feed, and generally keep alive. They make it look cool, and I’m endlessly happy for them. 

It took a long time for me to feel like an adult, on the inside, but I can now publicly declare that I actually do. Not quite Hov, and not quite Bleek, but close enough that I can hear familiar vantages in both of their perspectives. It's interesting to feel this way. There’s further to go, but isn’t there always? At least, if we're lucky, we get to start every day anew, from the same place. 

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