"Takeover" is released

Why it matters

The single most contested line on "Takeover" is the Nas-related verse where Jay-Z accuses Nas of having had only one good record in his career ("a one-hot-album every ten-year average"). The line is empirically arguable; Illmatic in 1994, It Was Written in 1996, I Am... in 1999, the Nas catalog by 2001 had at least three records people had loved. Jay's argument was that they had loved them but each one had been weaker than the last. The Kanye West production on "Takeover" is the part that became foundational. The Doors loop, sped up and chopped, is the prototype of what would become known as the chipmunk-soul sample, the Kanye West signature throughout the early-2000s College Dropout era. Hearing this beat in 2001 was the first time a wide rap audience encountered the West production language at full force on a major album track. He had been producing for Jay since 2000; "Takeover" is the single most consequential beat of that early run. You can hear the entire next decade of Kanye-style sampling getting set up in three minutes here.