The Best Of Both Worlds

03/28/2002 8:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy

Music-biz logic dictates a superstar collaboration this massively hyped is doomed to disappoint, especially considering this is Jay-Z's third album in little more than half a year. But someone forgot to slip Jigga and R. Kelly that script, because The Best Of Both Worlds lives up to its title, with Kelly's heavenly crooning providing a nonstop supply of hooks for Jay's conversational but commanding rhymes.

There are few missteps among the 13 cuts, and the album's highs easily equal the best of both participants: "It Ain't Personal" is a magnificent, paranoid riff on the price of fame that sounds like it was inexplicably left off Jay-Z's The Blueprint, while the delicate "Naked" finds Kelly reaching a Marvin Gaye-like synthesis of the holy and the horny. Of course, some may complain the results are more slick than street--Kelly's presence does seems to bring Jigga's own pop tendancies to the fore, and bangers like "Somebody's Girl" stick out like jagged edges amongst the cushier funk grooves. Yet even hip-hop's crossover critics will have to admit it's rarely been done better than this.