According to DJ Khaled’s new album, “God Did”. As for the title track, it’s clear though that especially Jay-Z (or Jay Hova, fittingly) did – and that is to remind us that he can still outrap everyone. Already considered ‘verse of the year’ by seemingly every hip hop media outlet and the Twitter rap bubble alike, it’s interesting that Hov seems to be in a league of his own these days. Why? Because he sets his own rules.
Stealing the show with the longest verse, taking up over a third of the 8:21 minutes (!) long track, Jigga takes listeners through a resume of his accomplishments, both in music, but especially in life.
And while other rappers could make a whole song of the fact that they just bought a new private plane, it becomes more of a side note lyric when Jay also boasts about how three billionaires came from ‘Hov crib’: Kanye West, Rihanna and himself, with his ‘Roc boy’ buddy LeBron James as an honorary mention.
Seriously: No other rapper can literally afford to flex like this – but when he mentions how all of this money helped him to free fellow rapper Meek Mill and friends from jail, weaving it in a tale about criminal justice reform and second chances, that’s when the verse gets special.
And just sit back and enjoy when Young Guru, Hov’s long-time sound engineer and friend, explains one of the verse’s double, triple and sometimes quadruple entendres with the superficially simple lines “Then we said, ‘Fuck it,’ took the dope public out the mud, they gotta face you now, you can’t make up this shit”:
By the way: Rick Ross and Lil’ Wayne, who are both infamous for outshining rappers on collabs, rap on “God Did” as well. But Jay-Z simply overshadowed them by essentially placing a whole song within a song. GOAT stuff.
