Is that your hits?!

Jay-Z always seemed to have a fine eye for talent, but he isn't without his missteps. Take his protege, Memphis Bleek, for example.  Bleek has relentlessly sucked at everything aside from reciting the occasional Jay-penned verse, he released four full length albums, each of which went triple Styrofoam, and his best album track was a Jay-Z solo song. When Jay left Roc-A-Fella Records in 2008, he took it as an opportunity to drop Bleek like he was hot (although Bleek has never been hot). We theorize that Def Jam, stuck with Bleek's contract and not wanting him anywhere near a studio, put him in charge of selecting Jay-Z songs for compilations. That is the only explanation the disappointing and puzzling tracklisting recently announced for the upcoming Jay-Z release, The Hits Collection Vol. 1 (see the lineup below).



Creating a single disc of hits from a music career that spans as long and has garnered as much success as Jay-Z's is not an enviable task.  In fact, it is probably not possible.  However, if the disc has to exist, it should at least follow some set of logical rules or constraints in narrowing down the songs.  Whoever put together this album apparently only follows one rule: there are no rules!

Considering this is a “hits” collection, and not a “best of”, it might make sense that only hit singles were included. But if that were the case, then what is “Public Service Announcement (Interlude)” doing on there? While a great song, this was not even a single, let alone a hit.  And conversely, if every song is fair game, why include P.S.A. over so many Jay-Z classics?  It is far from his best song, and there are already three Black Album cuts! 

Furthermore, if this is a compilation of “hits”, why do singles that were hardly “hits” like “Show Me What You Got” make the cut while actual hits, such as “Can I Get A…”, “Girls, Girls, Girls”, and “Excuse Me Miss” are excluded.  And why are four songs included from The Black Album and three from Blueprint 3 when every other album (including the similarly single-heavy Vol 2: Hardknock Life) limited to 1 song a piece, or completely left out in the case of Reasonable Doubt and In My Lifetime Vol. 1 (apparently “Ain’t No Nigga” was not as big as the international mega-smash “Roc Boys (And The Winner Is…)”).

The worst part of this track listing, however, may be the entirety of Disc 2. Don’t build us up by announcing that this collection will include 5 unreleased Jay-Z songs if all you have are freestyles and remixes that everyone has heard before. Can you even classify songs that are widely and officially distributed online as “unreleased”? While they may not be included on any albums (these kind of songs rarely are), the artists still put them out! This seems especially like horseshit considering how many unreleased, or at least rare, Jay-Z songs there actually are out there. Don’t be lazy!

We are sure Memphis Bleek did not actually put this disc together (he is too busy pretending to release albums). The point is that whoever did put it together sucks just as much and just as hard as Bleek, and should be equally ashamed of themselves.

Disc 1
1. Public Service Announcement (Interlude)
2. Run This Town (feat. Rihanna & Kanye West)
3. ‘03 Bonnie & Clyde (feat. Beyoncé)
4. Encore
5. I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)
6. Izzo (H.O.V.A.)
7. D.O.A. (Death Of Auto-Tune)
8. 99 Problems
9. Empire State Of Mind (feat. Alicia Keys)
10. Dirt Off Your Shoulder
11. Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)
12. Show Me What You Got
13. Roc Boys (And The Winner Is…)
14. Big Pimpin’ (feat. UGK)

Disc 2
1. Young Gifted And Black
2. Pump It Up (Freestyle)
3. My President Is Black (Remix)
4. Go Hard (Remix) (feat. Kanye West & T-Pain)
5. Most Kings (feat. Green Lantern)