According to USA Today critic Steve Jones, the record marked a return to the street-oriented sound of Jay-Z's 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt.

[15] Reviewing the album in Entertainment Weekly, Anthony DeCurtis said it reconnects with Jay-Z's urban demographic, "with flair",[5] while Steve Jones of USA Today was particularly impressed by his lyrics and flow, finding both to be "razor-sharp as ever".

[1] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau argued that Jay-Z has too much at stake commercially to depart from "playing the now-a-rapper-now-a-thug 'reality' game with his customers, thugs and fantasists both", but he impresses with "a rugged, expansive vigor, nailing both come-fly-with-me cosmopolitanism and the hunger for excitement that's turned gangster hangouts into musical hotbeds from Buenos Aires to Kansas City".

[16] Soren Baker was less impressed in the Los Angeles Times, writing that the record lacks the "biting humor and spectacular wordplay" of his previous albums.

[17] AllMusic's John Bush wrote in a retrospective review that a couple of overwrought productions ("Dope Man", "Things That U Do") keep it from being among Jay-Z's best albums.