The Listomania I make the lists, you shoot them down. Quid Pro Quo.

125. Jay-Z – Roc Boys

This is but the first time you will see Jay Hov on the list. (And yes, for rap songs I'm going to use as many goofy sing songy nicknames as I can come up with, because I am the whitest boy on the face of the planet and otherwise I would just type Jay-Z over and over again.) Well actually, it's not even the first, because he guested on pretty much every good pop song of the decade, including the aforementioned and busted upon "Umbrella." But like Jack White, Jay-Z is a figure that is inseperable from the fibers of music in the '00s. Like Prince in the '80s, Jay-Z is the genius of an art form traditionally not accepted as a whole by white America, but as did the tiny purple symboled one in his decade, Jay has helped make rap/hip-hop/urban the dominant sound of this decade.

This song is a comeback. Just like all his other songs. Constantly self-imposing retirements will really do that. But this single came after not just a hiatus, but also what was easily Jay-Z's single worst album, Kingdom Come. This is a beautiful bounceback though, stylish and historic and cultural and prescient. From his soundtrack to the ballsy and smooth-like-silk film American Gangster, Roc Boys is a call back in every way possible. A song about how Jay-Z made his own way, slinging 'ye before he could sling words. A song about the '70s, and black culture blossoming in America after decades of shit. A song about a bygone era in music, harkening back to Motown and Stax with the hottest horns this side of the Millenial Line.

Like any Jay-Z song, the man is the point, the strongest aspect, what makes the song what it is. An impossible to miss personality comes through, with obvious comparisons between '70s drug bosses and modern entrepeneurs shining through in a poignant and ever-necessary conversation. But teh horns, dey kills meh. They come in like hot fire, and loop throughout the song with a real hook, not a chipmunked female singer, not bell tones, not Timbaland raga shimmy. This shit is a real, messy, smack you in the face James Brown hook. And when Jay tells them to run out at the end, he unecessarily gives up the spotlight not to a section of instruments, but to a tonal callback that encapsulates everything the song is about. The man knows how to operate a throwback, and makes it work with ease. One other thing Jay has adopted from his '70s icons: don't let 'em see you sweat.