Jay-Z's next and last album - "The Black Album"

But, Jay claims, those ideas won't be making it onto records for much longer. His own relationship to performing has been sufficiently ambivalent that he's talked about retiring ever since his first album. He swears, though, that he now has his exit strategy worked out.

After the experimentation of "The Blueprint 2," he says he's got one more album in him and then it will be time to move on. "My next album will be 'The Black Album,' " he says, "and then that's it. I want to make it a prequel to 'Reasonable Doubt,' leading up to me having an idea for a song. I'll be saying, 'I'm going to use that Four Tops song, "Ain't No Woman" [a reference to his breakthrough single "Ain't No Nigga"],' and that's how the album's going to end. I'm going to loop the whole thing back together, make it a nice package, and that's it -- it truly, truly is. I just feel like it's time to do something else."