Is Jay-Z's 'Empire State of Mind' the new 'New York, New York'?

NEW YORK — It has been nearly impossible lately to surf the radio without hearing Jay-Z rapping about his gritty-to-glamorous ascent in the big city as Alicia Keys swoons about the "concrete jungle where dreams are made of ... "

The song "Empire State of Mind" gave the rap legend his first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 list. And last month Keys issued her own version on her new album and has been regularly performing this salute to the aspirations of native New Yorkers.

For the last three decades, Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," from the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb, has ruled as the city's sentimental favorite — in ballparks, at weddings and to signal determination. Over the same three decades, hip-hop grew to be the dominant force in pop music and culture and Jay-Z one of its leading citizens. Like any good New Yorker, he has made no secret of his ambition to topple what came before him; and since there are few left to take on, he's trying to elbow aside the Chairman of the Board with an anthem reflective of a new generation.

But can any hip-hop song prove as universal and enduring as Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train" (written by Billy Strayhorn) or Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "Manhattan"? Or, for that matter, that other easy-to-whistle "New York, New York," by Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which explains, "the Bronx is up and the Battery down, the people ride in a hole in the ground"?

The answer is maybe, maybe not.

From the very start of "Empire State," Jay-Z's lyrics sum up his rise from street kid to celebrity as well as his vision of New York in line with anthems that precede him, going so far as to quote Kander and Ebb's song:

Yea I'm out that Brooklyn

Now I'm down in 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.

Even the idea of a "new Sinatra" feels wrong to Jonathan Schwartz, a radio personality from New York with an encyclopedic knowledge of the singer. During a phone interview, Schwartz hums one of his favorite ballads of the city, the 1934 slow-tempo "Autumn in New York," by Vernon Duke, who composed "April in Paris."

"These songs are ... for everyone, forever," he says, complaining that the street music of today "won't last because it has no melody and very little that even rhymes. Words like 'home' and 'alone' don't rhyme and yet that's what these rappers use. That never would have been with a Vernon Duke or Oscar Hammerstein ... "

But composer John Kander, who with the late Fred Ebb wrote the musical "Cabaret" as well as Sinatra's enduring anthem, is intrigued by Jay-Z's ode to the big city.

"I thought it was kind of interesting because it juxtaposed totally different styles of music," says Kander, 82.

Kander and Ebb wrote "New York, New York" for a 1977 Martin Scorsese movie of the same name, starring Robert De Niro. Sinatra first performed it at a 1978 concert in Radio City Music Hall.

Kander could not — and would not — attempt to explain what makes a city connect with a certain song; he merely pointed out that "Empire State of Mind" has as much of a chance of enjoying another 30 years of popularity as his did 30 years ago.

"It doesn't matter what I think or what the critics say," says Kander. "It's what people think and feel and hang on to."