By JON PARELES


In his songs, the rapper Jay-Z has singlemindedly flaunted his executive ambitions and how they’ve paid off.

On “The Blueprint 3,” his newest album, recently released in the United States, he confronts anew what it is to be a mature rapper: rich, respected, pushing 40.

To keep things interesting Jay-Z applies all his craftsmanship - wordplay, allusions to his well-documented life, a new verbal cadence for every song. It’s an uneven album, with a few too many plush, self-satisfied productions, but when Jay-Z is goaded by the right beat, it’s clear how he earned his arrogance.

Throughout “Blueprint 3” he cites his expensive cars, his Manhattan loft, his place on the Forbes.com Celebrity 100 list of highest-paid entertainers (though he ranks well below his wife, Beyonce) and his role - “a small part” - in helping elect President Obama. But all the business, Jay-Z insists, is just a means to an end: making music and keeping hip-hop vital.

“I like music,” he said in an interview at his Manhattan studio, Roc the Mic. “I can do without business. I think all artists should be paid for their work, but business is business. It’s like a necessary part of it for me, more so than something I enjoy.” He added, “I want to be remembered as an artist first, but it’s not up to me.”

At 39, Jay-Z is hip-hop’s reigning anomaly: a grown-up, level-headed, career-minded adult who has stayed at the top of the charts. His songs have told and retold the poverty-tobling story of Shawn Carter, Jay-Z’s real name, who grew up in the tough Marcy Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and dealt drugs before turning to hip-hop. By the time his first album came out, he said, “I was the oldest 26-year-old you ever wanted to meet.” Then, all his boasts came true. In “So Ambitious” on the new album, he raps, “I went from pauper to the president/’Cause every deal I ever made set precedent.”

Most rappers would be lucky to have an album or two in the Top 10 before being supplanted by younger, brasher competition. Yet Jay-Z reached the top and has remained there since he released his debut album, “Reasonable Doubt,” in 1996. That album, and the nine solo albums that have followed it, have all sold at least a million copies in the United States.

Last year, as his contract with Def Jam Recordings neared its end, he faced the new economic conditions of pop - dwindling album sales that make performing and licensing more reliable sources of income - and stepped outside the established recording companies. He made a 10-year, $150 million deal with the concert promoter Live Nation encompassing his albums, tours, publishing and endorsements while financing his own recording company and management firm, Roc Nation.

“I don’t get dropped, I drop the label,” he raps on the new album.

Jay-Z turns 40 in December, and he’s well aware that hip-hop usually has younger demographics. “The reason that you turn off the hip-hop as you mature is because there’s not enough of what you’re going through in your life currently,” he said. “There’s not a lot of people who have come of age in rap because it’s only 30 years old. As more people come of age, hopefully the topics get broader and then the audience will stay around longer.”

For the album’s first single, he pointedly chose “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune),” which ridicules the robotic, computer-tuned hip-hop aimed for pop radio play and ring tone sales.

“It doesn’t have a hook,” Jay-Z said happily. “But it was the right thing to do at the right time, and it felt good. And then the question happens: What are you doing it for anyway?

“Are you doing it to make a Number 1 record, or are you doing it to invoke conversation, to make art, to push the culture? That’s way more important than a Number 1 record.”

Jay-Z has already announced that his next album will be more experimental. “Hip-hop is about the gift of discovery,” he said. “As an artist you’re fighting against everything that’s new and everyone’s fascination with the new thing. So not only are you swimming upstream, you have someone pulling on your leg: the new guy, the weight of the new guy.”

He shifted similes. “It’s like a crowded hallway full of people and you have to walk against it,” he said. “Some people don’t make it to the end of the hall. You’re always in the way. You have to be built for competition.”


Ten of Jay-Z’s solo albums have sold more than a million copies.