Following Jay Z’s success with, well, everything he’s ever done, “Magna Carter…Holy Grail” seems different.

It could be that this album was offered early for free via a mobile app available to the first million Samsung users to get it, or it could be the high-profile advertising with Jay Z talking about his lofty album on the “duality” of his fame and how he tries to remain himself.

Together, these advertising techniques allowed the album to undeservedly hit Platinum before it was physically released.

At its best, the album is an experiment on marketing to a digital generation with a couple decent tracks. At its worst, the album is just another album by just another rapper. This might be okay if it wasn’t Jay Z.

Jay Z has had 13 consecutive albums to debut at the top of the Billboard 200, making him, as he will make sure you know, the king of hip-hop.

This album, however, falls far short of Jay Z’s own lofty goals and fails to stay interesting after the first few tracks.

The album begins with the only song clearly about “duality,” “Holy Grail.” The song kicks off promisingly and holds high standards for the rest of the album, which are never fully met.

The song is an ode to fame and the headaches of paparazzi and crazy fans. Justin Timberlake excellently contributes by singing the hook in a Bruno Mars-esque style and even provides a brief parody of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” following a Curt Kobain reference from Jay Z.

The album then shows fame’s other side of the coin with “Picasso Baby,” bragging about his wealth and art collection with blatant, uninteresting references to famous artists.

Rather than provide the sense of duality the artist was hoping for, it just seems bi-polar and hypocritical.

The next tracks, “Tom Ford,” and “F***WithMeYouKnowIGotIt,” fall far into a break in the wave with weak rhymes and repetitive beats. Luckily, there’s another swell following and the crash doesn’t quite sink the album.

“Oceans,” appropriately featuring Frank Ocean, tells the story of the slave trade and references race relations.

The song is ominous and features some of Jay Z’s strongest rhymes on the album. The subject matter fits well with the production and creates a ballad of sorts for victims of the slave trade with Ocean singing, “This water drown my family, this water mixed my blood.”

The album falls into yet another valley until the ninth track, “Heaven,” where he addresses conspiracy theories and his issues with religion in a well produced, almost soft rock sounding song. He even features a chorus from R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.”

Unfortunately, Jay Z makes the mistake of explaining his own play on words in the final verse saying “You gotta love it, I arrive at the pearly gates/I had luggage, meaning I had baggage.”

Yet again, the album falls into a valley, not quite remedied by “Part II (On the Run),” which he performs with his wife and “the Queen of pop,” Beyoncé.

The remainder of the album falls into obscurity with nothing even worth noting here.

The album’s single strength and one (almost) redeeming factor is its production, which brings a unique twist to quite a few tracks on the record even the otherwise terrible “Tom Ford.” Among those involved in production are Timbaland, Jerome Harmon and Pharell Williams.

Whether he was distracted with family and his basketball efforts or just plain lazy, this was certainly not the king of hip-hop at his best. Even though the album was bad, it showed the world a new way to market and sell music to a tech-savvy generation. Of course, it also helps that he’s Jay Z.