His writing career is just as bipolar as he is.  He's either word for word, one of the most interesting, straight-forward writers working (American Psycho, Glamorama, Lunar Park) or he's so unreadable I want unlearn language (every fucking thing else he's ever written).

In Lullaby I'm pretty sure he writes something akin to the following paragraph on every other page:

Great point. Also, I know Rabin's gone now, but I'm still having a difficult time getting over the "D" given to Pain and Gain, an entertaining as hell "B-" movie if ever there was one, but one with Michael Bay as director, so therefore it was easily dismissed.

It just seems like this was a great opportunity for a "D" or an "F" even. Let's stop referring to shitty movies as "mediocre." They're just shitty movies.

Reasonable Doubt only got 4 mics in The Source and the general consensus was that it was a better-than-most Cuban Linx knockoff (which isn't necessarily wrong or a knock against it) In My Lifetime didn't sell very well nor was there a ton of hype behind it, both of which counter your assertion. Jay-Z blew up with Vol.…

In case it wasn't already obvious, it's been awhile since I listened to the album. I'll agree that D'Evils is a great song. Can I Live sounds like every other song of that era that was trying to sound like Cuban Linx.

It's fucking corny as hell.

No, I mean, it's a classic, but, I mean, it's not really a "hip hop" classic. It's a terrible hip hop song, but it's a great pop song. In a lot of ways, it still holds up better than a lot of Jay-Z's stuff, just in a different way.

Oooh. Good call.

Yeah, but do you think Jay-Z had something to do with that. I remember 12-15 years ago thinking, "Man, Jay-Z really sucks and his flow is terrible." And then soon after we started getting guys like 50 Cent and Young Jeezy and Freeway.And now here we are, today.

Reasonable Doubt was a decent album with 3 really good songs (Can't Knock the Hustle, Brooklyn's Finest, Dead Presidents) that got retconned with "Classic" status after a number of years had gone by and Jay-Z still hadn't actually made a "classic" album. People started saying, "If he's so great, how come all of his…

That's kind of an odd criticism anyway, because murder, armed robbery and getting your brand new partner unknowingly high off LSD for your own personal benefit is not a morally "ambiguous" area. It's fucking WRONG. It's not like the movie was about Denzel Washington killing and robbing people to raise money to save a…

The Rundown is a borderline great action flick… with good performances. So it doesn't quite fit for this topic….

It was a good line, but untrue. It was Written was better than anything Jay had put out until Blueprint and, in retrospect, I am… is about as good as Hard Knock Life Vol.2, neither of which (I am…/HKL V.2) hold up very well.

Okay, so Kate Bosworth was pretty wooden. The rest of the cast was pretty good and Spacey was so hammy that many believe he was doing "too much" acting.

It was an earnest movie with a hopeful message that wasn't "dark and gritty" nor "self-aware." In today's culture, those are the biggest sins a movie can make.

It's a pretty fun movie. But, again, the hate is a reaction to its pedigree as opposed to its actual quality. "Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts in a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously? tsk, tsk, hmphf." If it isn't "dark and gritty" or "meta" the internet doesn't take kindly to these kinds of things….

I'm a Superman twerp who felt pissed that some of the basic attributes of the character were 86'd for one more, unneeded, needlessly brooding, depressed, conflicted superhero.

Ultimately, that's the point though. You're a hundred percent right, and yet… it's a story that's survived for thousands of years and has been reproduced in literally every storytelling medium in one form or another. So, while the drama might not work for you, it's working for a whole lot of other people.

"Invincible guy who always win" is the description of pretty much any protagonist in any action movie, though. If you honestly don't think Bond, Batman, Bourne, Thor, Iron Man, etc. fall into that description, you're either in denial or you're not paying attention.