When I Come Back Like Jordan Wearing the 4-5

…It’s not to play games with you.” That was a line uttered on Encore, a song from the retirement album of Jay-Z. Then during what Jay called the worst retirement ever, he released a duet album with R. Kelly, a mash-up album with Linkin Park (not to mention the unofficial mash-up, The Grey Album), and spit verses on multiple different albums. Even his comeback was the worst kept secret in music circles as Kanye West and Pharrell of the Neptunes both said they were working on the project long before Jay admitted he was coming out of retirement.

So three years after his farewell with The Black Album, Jay-Z is back with Kingdom Come, a name that comes from a Superman comic book of the same name where the Man of Steel comes back from self exile. Much like his previous album, Jay handles almost all the rapping himself with guests like John Legend, Usher, Beyoncé, Ne-Yo, and Chris Martin (yes the dude from Coldplay) relegated to singing the hooks. And then there is the steller line of producers, aside the previously mentioned West and Neptunes, Swizz Beatz, Just Blaze, and Dr. Dre who behind the boards for five tracks.

The rust still lingers as Jay isn’t on the top of his game for most of the disk. He even brings down some of the joints as his flow is just anemic over Blaze’s great beat of Oh My God. But Blaze doesn’t repeat that success as his sample of Rick James doesn’t work on the title track. And he was also at the helm of the weak comeback single Show Me What You Got that jacks the same sax from the early nineties oversexed Rump Shaker. The Neptunes continue their downslide with the unlistenable. West has a misstep with Do U Wanna Ride.

Even Dr. Dre produced a rare weak track with the poorly conceived 30 Something where Jay tries to convince himself that “Thirty is the new twenty.” Dre does much better on the laid back Lost Ones. Trouble takes his trademark sound and makes it futuristic much better than Timbaland tried to do on the horrible Justin Timberlake album (this begs the question was Timbaland absent from Kingdom Come to make that crap?). Dre also has his hands on the best songs on the album that end the album starting with Minority Report that sees Jay tackle Hurricane Katrina and the broader topic of poverty that features snippets from the evening news as well as the infamous, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” That is followed by Beach Chair that features Martin on the hook and behind the board and may be Hova’s most introspective track to date.

Like the last album, Michael Jordon references are a plenty and maybe it’s too true. The poor verses that Jay dropped on other artists songs during his “retirement” were about as good as Jordon’s baseball career. And lets not forget that Jordon didn’t win the championship in his first season back. Hopefully will get back on track with future releases and doesn’t take the Jordon comparison any further or he may quickly turn into the Wizards version of the basketball star, as Jay already has the executive power.

Song to Download - Oh My God

Kingdom Come gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.