...listen to "Empire State of Mind."

Click to play

Let's take it piece by piece.

The hook features New Yorker Alicia Keys in stomach-flexing belt-out mode (the better to toast the town), and, at first, annoyed me. I've long suspected Keys confuses singing loudly with singing well, and thought she was laying it on way too thickly this time around. Also, I'm not sure her vocal tone is suitably "brassy," though that's clearly what she's going for.

Now, though, I realize her hook has to be as blown out and cheesy as it is, and if her voice isn't the best, it doesn't matter. She's singing powerfully, pushing her limits or at least seeming to come close, and that's what's most important. That makes people sing along. The song needs Keys' punch-the-air type energy, because Jay-Z's too calm for that, period, and the beat's too cool, too. Keys is the Don King to "Empire State of Mind"'s Mike Tyson.

UK producer Al Shux and some other people I've never heard of are responsible for the beat, which rains piano chords and exudes swishy-pants swagger. How can you not love it? The beat is a piano festival, and the piano comes from The Moments' "Love on a Two-Way Street" (1969). Manly bass notes echo forever, and could hold down the track by themselves if not for the chords falling in time at the other end of the keyboard. If you listen to a lot of synth-driven hip-pop, or rap music one could conceivably strip to, the pianos in "Empire State of Mind" are arresting and majestic, like stumbling out of a nightclub directly onto the viewing deck of the Statue of Liberty.

Cliché of clichés, the song romanticizes New York City as the premier place for achieving one's dreams -- its streets will make you feel brand new, its lights will inspire you, etc. -- and warns against the chew-you-up-and-spit-you-out flipside to all its gloss. But who cares if Jay-Z's working in tropes? He's always done that. Jay-Z is famous for not bringing anything new to the table, topically. Instead, it's all about his mellifluous cadence, incomparable wordplay, rapid-fire rhymes, and near-total lack of displayed effort. These are show-stopping verses. For all the criticism "Blueprint 3" deserves -- it's an underwhelming exercise in crowd-sourcing, but that's another blog post -- Jay goes hard, lyrically, through the whole thing. "Empire State of Mind" has crazy rewindables, and they're all linked together in a singsong style, with each line made up of identical rhythmic figures with little dips in tone at the ends. Little curtsies. Jay-Z is the most graceful rapper of all time.

Here's my best try at transcribing the first verse in "Empire State of the Mind":

I'm off that Brooklyn
Now I'm down at TriBeCa
Right next to DeNiro
But I'll be hood forever
I'm the new Sinatra
And since I made it here
I can make it anywhere
Yeah they love me everywhere
I used to cop in Harlem
All of my Dominicanos
Right there up on Broadway
Brought me back to that McDonalds
Took it to my stash spot
Five-sixty State Street
Catch me in the kitchen
Like a Simmons with the Pastry
Cruising down 8th Street
Off-white Lexus
Driving so slow
But BK is from Texas
Me, I'm off that Bed-Stuy
Home of that boy Biggie
Now I live on Billboard
And I brought my boys with me
Say what up to Ty-Ty
Still sipping mai tais
Sitting courtside
Knicks and Nets give me high fives
N---a, I be Spike-ed out
I could trip a referee
Tell by my attitude
That I'm most definitely from...