‘JAŸ-Z in 8’ Review: Rick Rubin’s Handsomely Made HBO Docuseries Impresses and Exasperates in Equal Measure

Let’s keep this simple: Rick Rubin‘s new eight-part HBO docuseries JAŸ-Z in 8 will be essential viewing for passionate fans of Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, who is also an executive producer on the series.

For general appreciators, the series’ excesses and redundancies are likely to be frustrating, as are its frequent lack of focus and general sense of over-sanitization. But there’s still enough good stuff here to make it worthwhile, especially if you watch it on a weekly basis. (I put myself in the “appreciator” category. I’m a fan of his prodigious output up to The Black Album. Then… less so.)

JAŸ-Z in 8

The Bottom Line Filled with great moments and frustrating choices.

Airdate: 8 p.m. Friday, September 18 (HBO)
Stars: Jay-Z, Rick Rubin
Director: Rick Rubin

And if you aren’t a fan at all? Don’t watch! That’s fine. Nothing’s been lost here.

Oh, and if you’re allergic to irritating typographical choices, definitely steer clear of JAŸ-Z in 8, which should more accurately be reproduced as JAŸ-Z in ∞; honestly, the line has to be drawn somewhere, no matter HOV’s personal preferences.

Think of JAŸ-Z in 8 as a companion piece to the 2021 docuseries McCartney 3, 2, 1, in which Rubin and Paul McCartney discussed the former Beatles and Wings legend’s varied musical career for director Zachary Heinzerling. McCartney 3, 2, 1 wasn’t exclusively aimed at music nerds, but a certain measure of nerdiness was ideal for appreciating the six-episode deep dive, which featured thorough lyrical analysis and ruminations on a unique journey.

JAŸ-Z in 8 marks Rubin’s first extended directing stint since the 1988 Run-DMC feature Tougher Than Leather, carrying on the black-and-white aesthetic from McCartney 3, 2, 1, this time shot with impeccable gorgeous monotony by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young.

Young seems to have been granted a maximum of six camera angles or vantage points when it comes to capturing the conversation between Carter and Rubin, conducted over several days in an eerily empty and recessed chamber at Paris’ Palais Brongniart.

It’s a sparse set: a table, a couple of chairs, two giant speakers, a soundboard.

And it’s a simple premise.

Rubin presses play on a song, ostensibly without warning Carter. They stand around for a few minutes bopping along as the words to the song are spelled out onscreen. Then they discuss. Then they do it again.

While the McCartney documentary had thematic guiding principles for each episode, JAŸ-Z in 8 only occasionally seems to have any authorial form at all. Rubin makes his way through many of Carter’s best-known, most popular and/or most contentious songs, so you can expect conversations about “Brooklyn’s Finest,” “What More Can I Say,” “99 Problems,” “Allure,” “Public Service Announcement (Interlude)” and “4:44.” While songs like “Encore” and “Hard Knock Life” and “Big Pimpin'” don’t get full analytical treatment, they’re at least discussed in passing.

The first episode gives an indication that Rubin is taking things chronologically, but that turns out not to be close to the case, nor does he prod Carter to give biographical details in chronological order. In some instances, there’s a clear connection between consecutive tracks or a topic that Rubin is trying to tease out of his friend and collaborator. But overall the topicality is vague, as is the explanation for why this was an eight-episode project (other than that eight sideways is infinity).

Some episodes are as short as 37 to 42 minutes. Those are the best episodes. One is as long as 61 minutes. And there is absolutely no reason why that 61-minute episode needed to be 61 minutes. It’s not as if it features a huge personal bombshell.

Then, after six episodes in the music pit, Carter and Rubin sit down in a different part of the Palais and just conduct a straightforward, 46-minute interview — this one shot with a maximum of three camera placements — with Rubin teasing out anecdotes his subject mentioned but didn’t explain previously, or sometimes just allowing Carter to repeat a story he already told, sporadically verbatim. It’s strange, though I love how the seventh installment plays with the conventions of prestige dramas that so frequently save a flashback or standalone episode for the penultimate hour. Then Rubin and Carter go back into the pit for one last episode of Name That Tune.

Without delineated chronology or themes, JAŸ-Z in 8 never feels like it’s building to anything. There’s no holding out of a key song or a key story for that last episode, so it’s probably perfect for weekly viewing but it really drags as a binge.

Carter’s receptiveness to the game is inconsistent as well.

Sometimes he’s entertainingly candid, like when he talks about his Bed-Stuy upbringing, his difficult relationship with his father and his first introductions to hip-hop. There are great stories littered throughout involving Biggie, Nas, Big Daddy Kane, Irv Gotti and other contemporaries. Just as often, Carter keeps things oblique, as with his discussion of the background to “4:44” — the song in which he most emotionally discusses infidelity — and the lessons he learned.

Sometimes Carter is perceptively attuned to his own lyrical gifts, explaining bits of wordplay or complicated references to an impressed Rubin, who mixes solid questions and slack-jawed reactions of “Incredible!” Just as often, though, the metaphors are superficial or the references obvious, setting up a fun game in which Carter breathlessly notes that, say, a rhyme featuring “Corleone” is a nod to The Godfather. Thanks, Hov.

And sometimes Carter’s version of textual explication amounts to nothing more than reciting the exact same lyrics we just saw onscreen, only slower and without the backing track. Rubin nods along to those moments — which could have been trimmed and transformed JAŸ-Z in 8 into JAŸ-Z in 6 or maybe JAŸ-Z in 4 — with the same enthusiasm as when Carter actually breaks something down perceptively. Given the number of times Carter admits that a song was written in 15 minutes in the studio or wasn’t even written down at all, you’d think Rubin or the editors would know that sometimes there’s introspective gold to be mined and other times Carter is being asked to spend more time remembering a line than he spent conceiving it.

Rubin, as an interviewer, is happy to let his pal guide which topics he’s ready to dig into and which things he’d rather pass off with a vague or indirect reference, leading to some infuriating choices. “The Story Of O.J.” is a potent song, and Carter’s breakdown of the intra-racial conflict at its core is excellent. But if you’re going to play the exact verse that spawned accusations of antisemitism — “You wanna know what’s more important than throwin’ away money at a strip club? Credit / You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America? This how they did it.” — without even mentioning that fact, that’s soft. See also the frequency that Carter raves about problematic collaborators — Kanye! Puffy! — without any reservations or caveats or pushback.

Rubin is probably close enough to Carter to yield an interview with some openness, but too close to Carter to yield an interview that’s definitive — a limitation matched by or echoed in the limitations of the sparse visuals. This does not intend to be the Jay-Z documentary to end all Jay-Z documentaries. It’s a chance to be part of an intimate (“claustrophobic,” if you aren’t feeling it) and freewheeling (“rambling,” if you aren’t feeling it) chat between friends, who conclude the film not with the admiring respect of a challenging and difficult dialogue but with a hug and exchanged “I Love You”s.