Jay-Z’s ‘The Blueprint’: All 15 Tracks Ranked

I was never able to relate to people who say that they went to the store to cop The Blueprint on the day the Twin Towers fell 25 years ago.

That was because I had already bought the album a day early on Monday, Sept.

10 at Eclipse Records in downtown Paterson, NJ.

It’s not around anymore unfortunately, but they were known for selling highly-anticipated albums a day early if you went in and asked if they already had the particular project you wanted in stock.

I remember immediately getting into my car and throwing it in the CD player, and not putting it in drive until after “U Don’t Know” melted my brain.

I would spend the rest of that day hanging out with friends and listening to it a bunch of times, especially because it would be the first time we heard the rest of “Takeover” after he had teased it at Summer Jam earlier that year — moving on to another song after namedropping Nas .

His decision to declare war on the Queens MC triggered “Ether,” but before we were able to get to that, the world stopped the very next day for other reasons.

When I woke up on Tuesday, Sept.

11, I thought I was going to head to class at our local community college during my first week of freshman year.

I walked into my kitchen and saw my grandmother, who lived on the second floor, nervously washing dishes while she had the news on the TV in the living room.

When she saw me, she said somebody had bombed the Twin Towers.

I kinda dismissed her and told her that was old news, because terrorists had bombed the Towers a few years earlier.

But then I walked into the living room and saw the smoke coming out of the first building that was hit first, and as I stood there watching the live coverage, I saw the second plane hit.

The rest of the day was spent talking with family and friends about what we had witnessed and listening to this album.