Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | A |
| Entertainment Weekly | B+ |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| NME | 8/10 |
| Pitchfork Media | 8.0/10 |
| PopMatters | favorable |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Vibe | |
| The Village Voice | favorable |
The album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 463,000 copies in its first week.
The Black Album received general acclaim from contemporary music critics; it holds an aggregate score of 84 out 100 at Metacritic. According to The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), The Black Album is "old-school and utterly modern", as it showed Jay-Z "at the top of his game, able to reinvent himself as a rap classicist at the right time, as if to cement his place in hip-hop's legacy for generations to come". Steve 'Flash' Juon at Rap Reviews.com gave the album a nine out of 10 rating and stated, "Whether this release will settle the debate about his rank in hip-hop or just fuel the discussion further is ultimately not as important as whether or not this is a good album. It's not a good album – it's a GREAT album." Steve Jones of USA Today gave the album four out of four stars and stated, "He enlisted beats from an all-star cast of producers, who come through with top-shelf work. But it's Jigga's trademark lyrical dexterity and diversified deliveries that put him on a level all his own."
In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave the album a three-star honorable mention, indicating "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure." He cited "99 Problems" and "My 1st Song" as highlights and quipped, "Raps like a legend in his own time—namely, Elvis in Vegas". In a retrospective review, Robert Christgau gave the album an A rating in his consumer guide for MSN Music. Christgau noted varied producers on each track, writing that "each one sounds different, each one means different, and each one kills", and wrote of its legacy:
History has vindicated this album. On a meticulously hyped valedictory no one believed would be his actual farewell, the fanfares, ovations, maternal reminiscences, and vamp-till-ready shout-outs were overblown at best. But on an album where the biggest rapper of all time announces that he's the biggest rapper of all time, they're prophetic. Bitch about Kingdom Come and American Gangster if you must, but not The Blueprint 3 or Watch the Throne, and not his label presidency, amassed fortune, or close personal relationship with Warren Buffett. He's got a right to celebrate his autobiography in rhyme because he's on track to become a personage who dwarfs any mere rapper, and not only can he hire the best help dark green can buy, he can make it sing.Pitchfork Media ranked The Black Album at number 90 on its list of the top 200 albums of the 2000s, and Slant Magazine ranked it number 7 on its list of the Top 100 Albums of the 2000s. According to Billboard, the album is Jay-Z's top selling album of the 2000s and the 136th highest selling album of the decade in the United States.
Read more about this topic: The Black Album (Jay-Z album)
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