The Blueprint: Growing Old

A battle of hip-hop heavyweights this week. Jay Z's The Blueprint is the Spin entry, an album that functions as both a statement of success and as a model for how to Grow Old in hip-hop, a genre notorious (in 2001) for not having many artists with long careers (or even lives). Matt talks through Nas' Stillmatic and The Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death as other examples of how rappers deal with wealth, fame, and relevance as they mature. And boy howdy the rap beefs we get to talk about in this episode. Here's to "Ether," forever the best diss track.