Music
Kingdom Come was the first Jay-Z album released since 2003's The Black Album, which had been widely hyped as Jay-Z's "retirement" album. The video for that album's hit single "99 Problems" had ended with Jay-Z going down in a hail of gunfire. Jay-Z stated in interviews that that scene represented the "death" of Jay-Z and the "rebirth" of Shawn Carter. Because of this, Jay-Z had originally planned to release Kingdom Come under the name of Shawn Carter, but decided in the end to release it under his more-famous stage name. The album's second single, "Lost One" (produced by Dr. Dre) addresses Jay's split with Roc-A-Fella co-founder Damon Dash, the death of his nephew, and supposedly his relationship with singer Beyoncé Knowles.
Past collaborators Kanye West and particularly Just Blaze made significant contributions to the album's production. This is the first time Dr. Dre has played a substantial role in a Jay-Z album, as he produced four beats and mixed every song on the album. Relatively unknown newcomers B-Money, Scyience, and DJ Khalil also contributed to the album's production, as well as Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin. Kingdom Come's opening track "The Prelude" features additional vocals from Pain in da Ass who featured on some of Jay-Z's earlier album introductions, impersonating characters from movies such as Scarface, GoodFellas, and Carlito's Way.
Baseball star Carl Crawford uses "Dig a Hole" as one of his entrance songs when he comes up to bat. Fox used an instrumental version of "Oh My God" in a promo leading up to the 6th season premiere of 24. The title track "Kingdom Come" was not released as an official single but still received high enough digital sales in the U.S. to peak at #98 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #99 on the Pop 100. The Dr. Dre's produced track "Minority Report" received a MTV video. It was dedicated to the victims of Katrina.
The album's name was influenced by Jay-Z's production engineer Young Guru who is an avid comic book fan. Young Guru told Jay-Z of a comic book and graphic novel called Kingdom Come in which an aged Superman comes out of retirement to show the younger generation of super heroes how to be "real heroes". In contrast, hip hop as a whole was considered dead and Jay-Z was to make a come back and save hip hop and influence the newest generation of rappers. This is evidenced by the song "Kingdom Come" in which Jay-Z makes references to Superman, Clark Kent, Batman, and Spider-Man.
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