{"id":471606,"date":"2026-06-02T02:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T02:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/471606\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T02:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T02:06:13","slug":"jay-zs-reasonable-doubt-album-billboards-1996-review-of-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/471606\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay-Z\u2019s \u2018Reasonable Doubt\u2019 Album: Billboard’s 1996 Review of Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Jay-Z<\/a> announced a run of shows at Yankee Stadium in New York to celebrate the anniversaries of 1996\u2019s\u00a0Reasonable Doubt\u00a0and 2001\u2019s\u00a0The Blueprint, tickets \u2014 to paraphrase \u201cCan\u2019t Knock the Hustle\u201d \u2014 moved faster than a rabbit gets\u2026 well, let\u2019s just say the July 10 and 11 shows sold out in hours. (A July 12 concert<\/a> was later added to meet demand.) That announcement arrived 30 years after his first Billboard chart appearance, back when Brooklyn\u2019s Finest was just starting to conquer the globe and be chronicled by\u00a0Billboard.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe Charting \u2018Dead\u2019\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJay-Z, who has a fluid, flippy flow, is moving forward in the rap game with the dope, double-sided single \u2018Dead Presidents\u2019 backed with \u2018Ain\u2019t No N\u2014a,\u2019 \u201d reported The Rap Column in the April 6, 1996, issue of\u00a0Billboard. Hailing his \u201cloose lasso lines,\u201d columnist Havelock Nelson said the former track \u201cgained street appreciation and received radio airplay,\u201d while the latter \u201cfeatures feminine phenomenon Foxy Brown\u201d and \u201cshows signs of becoming an even bigger smash.\u201d His first top 10 Hot Rap Songs<\/a> single, the double side peaked at No. 4 on that chart and hit No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\tIn Through the \u2018Doubt\u2019 Door\t<\/p>\n

\n\tHova\u2019s debut album,\u00a0Reasonable Doubt, was \u201cphat an\u2019 all dat,\u201d according to the July 13, 1996, issue. According to a review in the July 20, 1996,\u00a0Billboard, \u201cThis album from the bullet-ridden streets of Brooklyn\u201d is \u201cbuilt atop slinky buttah-bounce, with talk about regulating and maintaining like a kingpin,\u201d featuring \u201ccoarse, hard-edged tracks [that] discuss selling white crack for greenbacks.\u201d Moving a reasonable 43,000 copies in its first week (according to Luminate), the album peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\tCan\u2019t Knock The In-Person Hustle\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe soundtrack to Eddie Murphy\u2019s smash remake of\u00a0The Nutty Professor\u00a0boasted \u201cseveral of this summer\u2019s biggest records,\u201d reported the July 13, 1996, issue, one of those being Jay-Z and Foxy Brown\u2019s hit collaboration. Def Jam\/Mercury staged a \u201cwildly successful in-store to promote the soundtrack\u201d at New York\u2019s Virgin Megastore on June 24, tapping Jay and Foxy, as well as fellow\u00a0Professor\u00a0emeriti Case, Trigger Tha Gambler and Smoothe Da Hustler. \u201cThe crowd was so thick that I was unable to enter the store,\u201d reported our columnist.<\/p>\n

\t\t\u2018Blueprint\u2019 for the Future\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe know rap is a flavor-of-the-month genre, and if any rapper steps away from finicky fans for too long, he or she may as well as hang up the microphone,\u201d ran a column in the Nov. 22, 1997, issue. But Jay had staying power: His second album,\u00a0In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, moved 138,000 units in its first week and soared to No. 3 on the Billboard 200. It signified the shape of music to come, too. \u201cRap accounts for three of the top five albums on the Billboard 200 and seven of the top 10 on Top R&B Albums<\/a>,\u201d noted the same issue. When\u00a0The Blueprint\u00a0arrived four years later (eventually spending three weeks atop the Billboard 200), the Sept. 22, 2001,\u00a0Billboard\u00a0declared, \u201cJay-Z deftly proves that while his celebrity status continues to rise, he remains firmly grounded to the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appears in the May 30, 2026, issue of\u00a0Billboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Jay-Z announced a run of shows at Yankee Stadium in New York to celebrate the anniversaries of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,1934,85,46,1619,409],"class_list":["post-471606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-genre-hiphop","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-magazine","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}