Like a lot of great albums, Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter doesn’t just capture the mind of its creator; it also captures where the culture was as a whole. By late 1999, the rivalry that had existed between East and West coast rap—however illusory or sensationalized—had waned with the murders of Tupac and Biggie. Meanwhile, the reign of Puff Daddy and the so-called “shiny suit era” had fragmented into something varied and decentralized (three of the year’s most popular rap albums were courtesy of Juvenile, DMX, and Lauryn Hill). At the same time, acts like Juvenile and Mystikal had helped push Southern hip-hop to the national stage, and The Roots and Mos Def were making the case for a thriving underground scene. A new century was coming, one in which rap would become America’s dominant form of pop music. And here’s the freshly-minted, multi-platinum JAY-Z, pulling the disparate threads together. Vol. 3 is an album that unites New York (“So Ghetto”) with the South (the Juvenile-featuring “Snoopy Track”), and combines the gritty (“Come and Get Me”) with the cosmopolitan (the UGK & Timbaland collaboration “Big Pimpin’”). Just as the union between Biggie and Puff Daddy made more sense after JAY-Z came along—he was the street hustler and the CEO, all in one—Vol. 3 manages to explore the broad range of visions for rap at the turn of the millennium, while also drawing out an underlying theme: Get money. But more than anything, Vol. 3 demonstrates the evolutionary leaps Jay had made on the microphone during the past decade. Like Louis Armstrong 70 years earlier, JAY-Z in 1999 is, on many levels, a pure exploration of rhythm and cadence: You can hear it in the way he drops into his lines as though by accident; the way he compresses time before stretching it like taffy; the way he hits the beat on the head, or weaves in and out of it, making his hard-won verses sound like offhand conversation. If you ever wondered whether JAY-Z is actually having fun (and with someone so determined, it’s understandable), just listen to him on Vol. 3.