Jay-Z Can Do No Wrong

A good friend of mine is of firm belief that Jay-Z is impenetrable from bad career decisions. And I'm under the increasingly supportive certainty that he's absolutely correct. His ascension from hyper-scatting, scrappy rapper to deservedly ego-tastic music-industry kingpin has been played out with gradualness and grace. And despite the minor transgression of the cumbersome faux-retirement gimmick, his creative output has remained consistently superlative, critically targeted at times for simply being less than flawless.

And as evidenced by the above advertisement for Rhapsody (and unlike his wife Beyonce's tactless endorsements), which has been in increasingly heavy rotation of late, Jigga can even bring a touch of class and flash to his work as a pitch man.

The innovative and chill-inducing spot (at least for longtime fans), which re-imagines a seamless, single-day photo shoot for all the MC's album covers, is like a cross between Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video and this recent Beatles "Rock Band" clip, except excessively less creepy than either.

Now if only VH1 superimposed him into last night's "Hip-Hop Honors: Def Jam" celebration, so he could take his rightful place rapping the hook to Foxy Brown's "I'll Be," rather than the second-rate imitation we got from Fabolous.