The retirement of Shawn Corey Carter, better known as Jay-Z — the self-proclaimed "Michael Jordan of recordin'" and "Rap's Grateful Dead" — was quite short-lived. His comback album, Kingdom Come, almost sounds as if he never left the game. It has a few weak spots — and lacks a good exam hypo — but still features Jay-Z'ss trademark flow.

The biggest change is not Jay'Z's flow, but his maturity. Several tracks are traditionally boastful routines, but now Jay-Z disses those who lack his experience and wisdom ("thirty is the new twenty"), not just his record sales and bling. He may be getting older, but he's getting better ("I'm just getting better with time; I'm like Opus-One") — and he's definitely richer ("what you call money I pay more in taxes"). From "30 Something":

I know everything you wanna do
I did all that by the age of twenty-one
By twenty-two, I had that brand new Ac' coupe
I guess you could say that my legend just begun, I'm
Young enough to know the right car to buy
Yet grown enough not to put rims on it
I got that six-deuece with curtains, so you can't see me
And I didn't even have to put tints on it
I don't got the bright watch, I got the right watch
I don't buy out the bar, I bought the nightspot
I got the right stock, I got
Stockbrokers that's movin' it like white tops

Jay-Z also turns serious and somewhat reflective at points, on issues large and small. In "Minority Report" — his take on Hurricane Katrina.

People was poor before the hurricane came
But the down pour poured is like when Mary J. sang
Every day it rains, so every day the pain
But ignored them, and showed em the risk was to blame
For life is a chain, cause and effected
***** off the chain because they affected
It's a dirty game so whatever is effective . . .

Left 'em on they porches same old story in New Orleans
Silly rappers, because we got a couple Porches
MTV stopped by to film our fortresses
We forget the unfortunate
Sure I ponied up a mill, but I didn't give my time
So in reality I didn't give a dime, or a damn
I just put my monies in the hands of the same people that left my people stranded
Nothin' but a bandit
Left them folks abandoned
Damn, that money that we gave was just a band-aid

On another track, "Kingdom Come," Jay-Z justifies his decision to stop buying and promoting Cristal:

**** Cristal, so they ask me what we drinking
I thought dudes remark was rude okay
So I moved on to Dom and Krug Rose
And it's much bigger issues in the world, I know
But I first had to take care of the world I know