Too Many Twos: "U Don't Know (Remix)" by Jay-Z
Drumming Upstream 31
Welcome to Drumming Upstream! I’m learning how to play every song I’ve ever Liked on Spotify on drums and writing about each song as I go. When I’ve learned them all I will delete my Spotify account in a blaze of glory. Only 448 songs to go!
This week I learned “U Don’t Know (Remix)” by Jay-Z, featuring M.O.P. and produced by Just Blaze. It is the second song by Jay-Z that I’ve covered for Drumming Upstream, following “Takeover” from late last season. This letter picks up where the last one left off, only a year deeper into Jay-Z’s career, so feel free to get caught up before proceeding to the letter below.
Now, onto “U Don’t Know (Remix)”.
Side A
“U Don’t Know (Remix)”
By Jay-Z
The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse
Released on November 12th, 2002
Liked on December 14th, 2015
In 2002 when he released The Blueprint 2: The Gift and The Curse, his seventh album in as many years, Jay-Z had to contend with two conflicting realities. 2001’s The Blueprint was a critical and commercial smash, one that proved Jay-Z could still make great albums in addition to hits. And yet, after trading diss tracks with fellow NYC rap heavyweight Nas, the public called the match in favor of his opponent. Somehow both a winner and loser at once, Jay-Z emerged from the studio with an appropriately bifurcated follow-up. The double disc The Blueprint 2 is a classic Jay-Z album complete with its own victory lap. Or/and: The Blueprint 2 is a bloated mess, stuffed to the gills with filler and reeking of creative insecurity.
“Too many songs”. This was Jay-Z’s own take on The Blueprint 2 in a 2013 ranking of his discography, in which he put the album second to last. Some of his other critical assessments are dubious (Magna Carta Holy Grail is NOT the 6th best Jay-Z record, honestly, it’s probably the worst) but this one line summary is spot on. There are way, way too many songs on The Blueprint 2. It didn’t take him 11 years to figure this out either. Only five months after its initial release, Jay-Z dropped a new, condensed version of the record called Blueprint 2.1 that excised many of the original’s tracks. Somewhere between a cash grab and an effort to save face, Blueprint 2.1 is not worth taking seriously. But its existence does provoke the question of why, if a single disc version of the album was so easy to conceive, The Blueprint 2 had so many songs to begin with.
The simple answer is that The Blueprint 2 suffered from a classic case of sequel-itis. You see it happen in movies and video games all time. If the first iteration of a series is a hit, the second entry has to top it in every conceivable way in order to feel half as satisfying. And if the first iteration is a success then the artist likely has the leeway to stretch themselves way too thin in order to top themselves. This may describe the rough outline of The Blueprint 2’s excess, but it doesn’t capture the exact shape of what’s stuffing it to two discs. One could imagine that after refashioning his sound on The Blueprint around the soul sampling production of Kanye West1 and Just Blaze (more on him on Side B) Jay-Z would fill the follow up with wall-to-wall tracks in that vein. That record would probably whoop ass, but it’s not the one that Jay made.
“The first Blueprint was familiar, like childhood, you know? All those old soul samples that my mom used to listen to cleaning the house” Jay-Z told Sway Calloway in 2002. With that foundation established, the plan was to have The Blueprint 2 expand into a wider range of aesthetic real estate.
So far in Season 2 of Drumming Upstream I’ve covered songs from five different double albums, each long for their own reason.2 Songs in the Key of Life is long because Stevie Wonder wanted to capture life in its totality. The River stretched out to two discs to accommodate Bruce Springsteen the rock star and Bruce Springsteen the folk singer. Summertime ‘06 wasn’t even really a double album, but took on that form as a marketing tactic and structural gambit. With Love was only as long as it was because Zomby put as little effort into editing it as he did making it. The Blueprint 2 doesn’t resemble any of those records. Instead it’s haunted by a different plus-sized release, The Notorious B.I.G.’s second and final album Life After Death. Jay-Z, who added a couple of verses to that record on the song “I Love the Dough”, doesn’t shy away from this comparison either. The Blueprint 2 opens with an extended dream sequence where Biggie’s ghost visits Jay-Z to offer career guidance and rap a verse from “Juicy”. Though mostly remembered for its morbid, posthumous release and its two massive singles, “Hypnotize” and “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems”, Life After Death is also noteworthy for incorporating sounds and artists from outside of New York’s regional wheelhouse. Alongside his usual dusty, boom bap tracks, Biggie made overtures to the double-time flow of the midwest and the laid back pace of the west coast. Life After Death showed a version of Biggie that could speak to the whole nation at once.
As if in an effort to top his deceased friend, Jay-Z doubled down on Big’s “something for everyone” approach until his record collapsed under its own weight. Every conceivable rap demographic in 2002 has a song for it on The Blueprint 2. Songs for the east coast, west coast, the south, and the midwest. Songs for the club, and a song about how you shouldn’t bother Jay-Z at the club. You like dancehall? Here’s Sean Paul! More of a rock guy? Here’s Lenny Kravitz. In a romantic mood? Beyoncé! Even Immortal Technique fans might get a kick out of the urban pessimism of “Meet the Parents”. Jay-Z freely admitted in his interview with Calloway that The Blueprint 2 has “no cohesive theme”, and yet he’s almost able to pull all of these threads together by sheer force of will. He doesn’t, disc 2 in particular is full of duds and misfires, but there’s easily an album’s worth of great stuff on The Blueprint 2. Great stuff like “U Don’t Know (Remix)”
If The Blueprint 2 has something for everyone, who is “U Don’t Know (Remix)” for? More than any other song on the record, even the one literally titled “The Blueprint 2”, “U Don’t Know (Remix)” is built directly on The Blueprint’s foundation. In its original form “U Don’t Know” was a fan favorite from deep in the album’s track list. Over sampled horn stabs Jay-Z argues his credentials with smug confidence against a pitch-shifted Bobby Byrd. The song sounds skyscraper-enormous, and Jay-Z raps like the elevator doors just opened to the top floor. Like any of the best Jay-Z songs, “U Don’t Know” is full of lines that stick in the crevices of your ears even after you’ve put the headphones down (Nas apparently felt the same way, since he reworked the song’s “I. Will. Not. Lose.” refrain into “Ether”). My personal favorite? “You put me anywhere on God’s green earth/I’ll triple my worth”.
Including a reiteration of a beloved album cut alongside so much stylistic diversity was a signal to Jay-Z’s base, his foundation, that he hadn’t forgotten them. “U Don’t Know (Remix)” is a gesture of good will to Jay-Z’s hardcore fans, made all the more potent by its featured guests. Backed by an extended cut of Bobby Byrd’s “I’m Not To Blame” Jay-Z begins the remix by announcing his latest signing to Roc-A-Fella Records, the Brownsville, Brooklyn duo Mash Out Posse. Mash Out Posse, or M.O.P., are your Fox News-watching uncle’s idea of rap music. Lil Fame and Billy Danze shout their heads off about robbing and or murdering any and everyone that they come across. M.O.P. make music that actively discourages anyone except the most hardcore of hardcore rap fans from listening. The duo are relentlessly aggressive, sustaining their in-the-red exertion for an hour plus on every album. M.O.P. are exhausting to listen to for long stretches of time, but in short bursts like their classic “Ante Up” the duo bring enough energy to turn any room into a mosh pit.
M.O.P. bring that same demolition derby recklessness to “U Don’t Know (Remix)”. Fame & Danze take Just Blaze’s beat for a joy ride, each barely getting a bar in before the other jumps in for a high volume ad-lib. Their lyrics are pure macho nonsense, all threats of hospitalization and declarations about their music being a better high than coke, but the content matters much less than the feeling. I don’t know if I caught a single word either of them said the first time I heard “U Don’t Know (Remix)”. The sheer force of their arrival was enough to send me into limb-flailing delirium on the couch, and I didn’t regain control of my faculties until Jay-Z’s verse.
After M.O.P.’s rampage across the track, Jay-Z’s verse could have easily felt like a formality. Instead he turns the duo’s spotlight theft into an asset, framing their signing as further proof of his business savvy. Jay-Z strolls into the song with the casual authority of a mob boss arriving after his goons have finished the dirty work. But while the surface of the song is all itchy-trigger fingers and drug money, there’s an unmistakable after-taste of micro-management. Listening to “U Don’t Know (Remix)” it’s just as easy to picture Jay-Z walking into the studio, coffee in hand, to make sure the new hires are acclimating themselves to the office before taking credit for their success and walking back out. Though he still has a few masterful turns of phrase (“I done forgot more than you ever learned/what you don’t know will make your home a permanent urn”) Jay-Z mostly coasts through his verse on references to the original track. This is a problem with The Blueprint 2 writ large. Jay-Z still can rap his ass off, but the record feels more like the product of an executive than an artist. Maybe this is why Jay-Z’s next album, 2003’s The Black Album, stripped back on the guest appearances and let Sean Carter speak for himself before “retiring” to focus on running the label.
“U Don’t Know” would continue to live on and take new forms even after Jay-Z temporarily moved on from the mic, but in order to follow that thread we’ll need to talk about the man who made its beat.
Side B
“U Don’t Know (Remix)”
Produced by Just Blaze
81 BPM
Time signature: 4/4
At the end of his first birthday Justin “Just Blaze” Smith stood at the top of the stairs in his parents’ home in Patterson, New Jersey, announced the word “boogie” and then promptly vomited. This is how Just Blaze described his DJ origin story to Fuse in 2013. Since that first gig his career has featured more boogie than vomit, in no small part due to his lengthy collaboration with Jay-Z and Roc-A-Fella records. I first became consciously aware of Just Blaze in college when he produced two show-stopping tracks for two of the era’s ascendant superstars. By the time Just Blaze produced Drake’s “Lord Knows” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Compton”3 he was already a legend and sounded like it. Those two songs are IMAX-worthy spectacles designed to announce that their headline performers are ready for the world’s biggest stages, a quality that both songs share with “U Don’t Know”.
Though The Blueprint is associated with launching Kanye West’s career, Just Blaze’s work was just as crucial to the album’s character. In fact, Just Blaze is practically the Gallant to Ye’s Goofus. Before becoming part of the Roc-A-Fella in-house team, Just Blaze split his time DJ-ing dance music in New Jersey clubs and studying computer programming. Without having to constantly declare it in public Just Blaze developed a reputation as a genius producer, capable of composing entire tracks in his head before touching his sampler. His background in dance music and compulsive record collecting lend Blaze’s productions a vast canvas to work on. But despite his range, when you think of a Just Blaze beat you’re probably thinking of something like “U Don’t Know”.
Originally composed with Busta Rhymes in mind, “U Don’t Know” is the soul-sample trend at its finest. The core of the song comes from Bobby Byrd’s “I’m Not to Blame”, a dirge-slow soul song about avoiding responsibility for an imploding romance. Just Blaze took the song’s horn refrain, chopped it into individual hits, and pitched them up. This process alchemically changes the mood of song from despairing to victorious. The horn hits practically explode over the track, while the bassline and drums beneath fortify the beat like armor around a tank.
The original beat is plenty hard, but Just Blaze wasn’t happy with the results. The principle tracking for the original Blueprint came together in all of a weekend, so some detail work had to be abandoned for expediency. When Jay-Z surprised the producer with a CD containing fresh verses from M.O.P. during the Blueprint 2 sessions, Just Blaze took the opportunity to finish the job. Given the chance for a re-do, Blaze gave the drums and bass a complete makeover, layering new cymbals over the old track and punching in slow rolling tom fills every few measures. The bass gets an even more extreme update. Every four measures the bass drops an octave into sub territory, the kind of move that makes car windows rattle a neighborhood away from your speakers.
Producing the song a second time around also let Just Blaze play with the audience’s expectations. Right when you think the drums are going to enter alongside Lil Fame, Just Blaze loops the song’s intro. This leaves Lil Fame rapping in a vacuum, hanging in the air before a huge fill brings the drums in for real. I know comparing rap to basketball is beyond cliche, but since I’m writing this during the NBA Finals I can say with personal authority that the rush I get from this neat production trick is identical to the one I get from the moment a ball is slammed and jammed through the hoop after hanging suspended in air after a pass.
One subtle reason for this moment landing with such an impact is a high rising pitch in the left channel that builds along with the drum fill. This is what in production terms is called a “riser”. If you’ve never heard one before, think of the THX sound’s younger, party-going brother. Risers are one of those production tricks that are so stupid they can’t not work. Sometimes it literally is as simple as making a note go steadily upward in pitch until the tension breaks. Though risers are common in all kinds of music, including modern hip-hop, they are especially prevalent in electronic dance music. “U Don’t Know (Remix)” hardly resembles the four-on-the-floor pulse of dance music, but Just Blaze’s inclusion of a riser reveals his familiarity with the genre’s appeal.
In 2013 Just Blaze saw the vision of “U Don’t Know” as dance music through to its logical conclusion. While collaborating with Baauer, producer of the then viral “Harlem Shake”, Just Blaze reworked Jay-Z’s request to “turn the music high, high, high, higher” from the original “U Don’t Know” into a hook. The result was “Higher”, a brain dead EDM track that nonetheless earned Just Blaze some crossover success with millennial molly consumers.
I find “Higher” dull. Compared to the dense interplay of details on “U Don’t Know (Remix)”, “Higher” is deafening in its lifelessness. The song telegraphs each of its obvious payoffs with the subtly of an adult gearing up to toss a ball past an eager dog. Maybe I’d find this kind of thing enjoyable if I’d been the club going type in the early 10s, but my idea of fun during the EDM boom was getting kicked in the face by the singer of Converge4, so what do I know? In either case, even from an objective standpoint “Higher” lacks the surprise and attention to detail that’s all over the production of “U Don’t Know (Remix)”. Those additional details alone make the remix a worthwhile addition to both Jay-Z and Just Blaze’s catalog alongside the original. They also make it a blast to play along with.
One thing I appreciate about Just Blaze’s production is that despite using electronic drums he still arranges his drum parts as if he were playing on a real kit. All of his fills, pauses, and builds feel like decisions that a real drummer would make on a session. This made “U Don’t Know (Remix)” one of the easier programmed drum parts to learn this Season. I especially enjoy the way Just Blaze cuts back to the intro fill during Jay-Z’s “one million, two million” shtick. I think part of what makes the song so exciting is that it feels like “the band” playing the song are just as excited about it as you are. Little choices like that repeated fill go a long way to establishing that feeling of authentic excitement.
Just Blaze leaves the end of “U Don’t Know (Remix)” instrumental, both to show off the new souped-up beat and as an implicit challenge to any aspiring freestyler looking to fill Jay-Z’s shoes. In that spirit, I veered off during this instrumental section to do my own thing. I rearranged a few of the fills, I moved my right hand over to the bell of the ride, and in one unplanned moment of enthusiasm I played a triplet fill on my double bass pedal. I earnestly wanted to keep that double bass pedal secret until a song that truly needed it, but I got caught up in the heat of the moment and the fill sounded too cool to discard.
I’ll have more to say about that double bass pedal soon, but before we get to that let’s see where “U Don’t Know (Remix)” stands on the Drumming Upstream Leaderboard.
DRUMMING UPSTREAM LEADERBOARD
“U Don’t Know (Remix)” is a middle child a few times over. It is the second stab at a song that its producer would mine for a third track a decade later. It’s featured on the second disc of the second entry in the second trilogy of Jay-Z’s career. Not quite 22, but that’s still a lot of twos! The song’s identity exists entirely in the shadow of its original. Despite all of the technical improvements that Just Blaze added to the production, the remix is not a better song than “U Don’t Know”. Hearing M.O.P. over a beat this good is thrilling, but the song never captures the same rush after the first time you hear the beat drop.
What “U Don’t Know (Remix)” reminds me of more than anything is the music that Jay-Z released while retired. Despite ostensibly being out of the game, Jay-Z still popped up for the occasional guest verse on someone else’s track before returning in earnest with Kingdom Come in 2006. Some of those retirement era verses are pretty good, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of your boss on vacation calling in to gloat from a beach somewhere.
And yet despite being little more than a press conference in musical form, “U Don’t Know (Remix)” is a lot of fun. It never ceases to make me smile any time it comes on, and it was even more fun to play along to on drums. I think that all evens out to a respectable showing at 14 on the Leaderboard, just below Maurice Ravel and just above .clipping.
Thanks for reading. In the next entry I’ll fill you in on that double bass pedal. Until then, have a nice week.
If you’re curious, I only covered one song from a double album in Season 1, “Earthmover” from Deathconsciousness by Have A Nice Life. That album and that band will appear in Drumming Upstream again.
Drake and Kendrick Lamar will both appear in Drumming Upstream multiple times. In fact, their appearances will be inextricably linked.