Eight years to the day of the 9/11 attacks and the release of the first Blueprint album, Jay-Z will be dropping The Blueprint 3. Jay-Z has been one of my favorite rappers since I was in middle school since I first heard Reasonable Doubt. The Black Album remains my favorite of his, and Kingdom Come and American Gangster didn't do it for me like his earlier stuff. However, the singles from B3 have me really excited. Both D.O.A. and Run This Town sound like Jay-Z back to true form so I'm pretty pumped.

Anyone else looking forward to it?

Always look forward to a jay-z album. But I think he started to fall off around the first or 2nd blueprint. That being said I will still look forward to the new album. Even if the album goes platinum its basically 1% of his total income for the year, its just to keep his name relevant.

"Run This Town" sounds like it has a Jonny Greenwood sample. I like it.

And "D.O.A." is great. He's 2-for-2 singles wise.

Shit. One of the tracks is produced by MGMT!

Really digging "Run this Town" so far. I can't wait to grab the album. My favs of Jay-Z are: Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint & The Black Album and then there's everything else.

Those are probably his 3 best. I still am partial to Hard Knock Life, Vol. 1. I like just about every song on it.

I myself didn't quite like Kingdom Come and American Gangster as much as his other albums but he had two great songs coming from those albums.

Lost One from Kingdom Come
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYv12Z-8AeM

Fallin from American Gangster
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I like the way Jay-Z has matured his music. I am definitely looking forward to his new album.

Jay-Z is my favorite living rapper. I was supposed to see him this Saturday in Concord, but it was cancelled.

Yup. Looking forward to it. Have liked the 1st 2 singles.

Absolutely brilliant. This is easily his best CD since Black Album, and ranks as either my favorite Jay-Z album or second to The Black Album. The numerous delays were worth it - album of the year for me.

You can listen to it in its entirety starting tomorrow on either MTV.com's "The Leak" or on Rhapsody for free. If you're even a casual hip-hop fan, give it a listen if you have the time. Can't recommend it enough.

I guess it leaked, will look tonight.

It looks like it has way too many guests.

My favourite Jay-Z album is and always will be The Blueprint. Classic album. One guest. Excellent lyrics, production, etc. Still going to pick this up. I'm sure it will be great.

hmm guess I might be alone in thinking that it was pretty average. Don't get me wrong I love Jay-Z and it is indeed quite better American Gangster and Kingdom Come but after a initial listen I felt it was just OK. I'm going to give it another spin and see if it grows on me, but I'm pretty disappointed. It's solid, but the post a couple up had me pretty hyped.

I feel the same way you did. Very underwhelmed on first listen I will listen again and see if it gets better. If you are into hip hop you should listen to Raekwon's Only Built for Cuban Linx Part II. It is very good.

Same here. It has some good songs and there's none that are outright terrible. But it's not his best work. Reminds me a little of Roc La Familia, where there's a few standout tracks but everything else isn't that good.

I thought it was pants at first, and there are still quite a few songs on here I don't care for ("Ghetto techno"? C'mon Jay), but after a few listens Jay still goes off lyrically.

The last verse of "Thank You" is just fantastic. I think a lot of the fun of listening to Jay-z now is that we know him, so I know what and who he's talking about, and it's really entertaining to see how clever he can be. There are other crazy lyricists out there, but few of them have the relationship with the listener like Jay does.

The album is a little uneven, but I'm diggin it.

Empire State of mind was awesome on the MTV Video Awards, have yet to listen to it all the way throuhg, but so far so good in the first half.