I watched the classic albums documentary on this, the series usually did rock albums I think this was the only rap album or first one they did.
It was pretty cool but also kind of gassed and propaganda like most Jay related stuff
He said in one of the studio interviews that there had never been an album that wordy before, or an album never had this many words
And I love the album as a piece of writing, it’s very dense
But the way he said it seemed like an overstatement and maybe disrespect to hip hop albums that came before, there’s already people spitting heavy at this point by 96, the Wu albums come to mind without even mentioning Nas