Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Entertainment Weekly	B+
The Guardian
The Independent
MSN Music	A–
NME	8/10
Pitchfork Media	4.5/10
Rolling Stone
Slant Magazine
The Sunday Times

The Blueprint 3 is the eleventh studio album by American rapper Jay Z, released September 8, 2009, on Roc Nation, through distribution from Atlantic Records. It is the final installment in The Blueprint trilogy, preceded by The Blueprint (2001) and The Blueprint²: The Gift & The Curse (2002). Production for the album took place during 2008 to 2009 at several recording studios and was handled by Kanye West, No I.D., The Neptunes, Jeff Bhasker, Al Shux, Jerome "J-Roc" Harmon, The Inkredibles, Swizz Beatz, and Timbaland. This is the only album in the Blueprint trilogy, as well as the first album since Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter (1999), not to feature production from Just Blaze.

The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 476,000 copies in its first week. It became Jay-Z's eleventh US number-one album, breaking the record he had previously shared with Elvis Presley, and produced five singles that achieved chart success. Upon its release, The Blueprint 3 received generally positive reviews from music critics.

The earliest hype over The Blueprint 3 came when DJ Clue released in January 2008 a mixtape song called "Ain't I", produced by Timbaland. In the intro, Clue says, "Off that Blueprint 3 baby!" However, a spokesperson for Jay-Z said that it was an old, unreleased song and that the recording of The Blueprint 3 had not yet started. On July 20, Timbaland, a frequent contributor to previous Jay-Z albums, told MTV News that he would be producing the whole album. But in an interview with the Rolling Stone magazine, Jay-Z called the statement "premature". In July 2009, Jay-Z confirmed The Blueprint 3 as the album's title during an interview with radio station Shade 45.

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Wikipedia