#Sampled: Revisits Jay Z’s 1996 classic “Can I Live”.
Reasonable Doubt was Jay Z’s first album released in 1996 and it containtd a lot of songs that made a stamp in the music industry, Can I Live was one of them. Produced by Irv Gotti, Can I Live sampled from an Isaac Hayes track “The Look of Love”.
Jay Z also revealed the last time he actually did write was for “Can I Live,” a standout track on his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt.
“What happened was, I was doing that song with someone else, and they heard the first verse and they was like, ’Man, you take that song. Finish it, ’cause it sounds like you got a lot more to say,’ ” Jay explained in a lengthy interview in which he discussed lyrics and songwriting. “You know, that type of thing. So I just wanted to get it down quick, I didn’t want to keep going over it. It was like [the album’s] mastering time, so I just sat down in the booth and wrote that [verse].”
The verse contains multiple gems over the woozy, horn-laden production, like the lines: “I stepped it up another level, meditated like a Buddhist/ Recruited lieutenants with ludicrous dreams of getting cream/ Let’s do this, it gets te-di-ous/ So I keep one eye open like, C-B-S, you see me stressed, right?”
According to Irv Gotti, who produced the track, the song was supposed to be a collaboration between Jay and a member of the rap group Original Flavor. Gotti mentioned he believed Nas was also set to appear on the track. But after the OF member passed on the guest appearance, Jay got to work finishing the song.
“From what I remember, he actually didn’t write the full verse,” Gotti wrote in an e-mail to MTV News. “But since the verse was so long, he wrote a few words down, and that made him remember the whole verse.”
Although Jay has long since given up writing down lyrics himself, his advice for one of his nephews, who’s an aspiring MC in his own right, is to write as much as possible. Repetition is the key to perfection, according to Jay.
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Reasonable Doubt
Roc-A-Fella 1996
…To Be Continued
Enterprise 1970
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