Jay-Z recently revealed his motivation for creating another Blueprint album came from his desire to establish a second trilogy of albums.
“I always wanted to finish the series because the first In My Lifetime series…you know I had three of those so I wanted to do three Blueprints,” Jay-Z told DJ Semtex in a recent interview. “I didn’t really have a direction and I didn’t want to just do it for the sake of just naming an album Blueprint. So as time passed, I finally got direction and it made sense to bring the trilogy to its end, you know.”
The pending release of The Blueprint 3 comes years after the arrival of 2001’s The Blueprint and it’s 2002 follow-up The Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse.
Both albums included a string of classic singles such as “Takeover,” “You Don’t Know,” “ Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” “Song Cry,” “Girls, Girls, Girls,” “’03 Bonnie and Clyde” and “Excuse Me Miss.”
“[On] this one, we’re pretty much becoming the icons that we looked up to. All the Sinatra’s and the Marvin Gaye’s and all those people that we looked up to. So I felt it was time for us to lay our blueprint or for me to lay my blueprint on a generation. Especially now with the way sales are going down and everything and how people being forced to make one type of music because they trying to get on the radio.”
Jay-Z also confessed to anticipating the reaction given to the album’s first single “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune).”
Since it’s release, the tune has generated reaction from fans and artists concerning the use of the autotune device in many of today’s current hits.
“It’s not like I hate autotune,” Jay-Z admitted. “ I mean I like records, some records with autotune. I just don’t wanna hear 1,000 records with autotune. It’s just too much.”
Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 is slated to hit stores on September 11.