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R. Kelly and Jay-Z's The Best Of Both Worlds stands out as a public failure in the careers of two stars unaccustomed to anything short of massive success. The album's poor showing can be blamed at least in part on bad timing: It appeared just as child-pornography allegations threatened to turn Kelly into a pariah, and Jay-Z refused to tour with his counterpart or promote the album. But the set's failure seems equally attributable to the puzzling decision to hire super-hack Tone of Trackmasters as its primary producer. Uniting Jay-Z and R. Kelly and then hiring Tone to produce is like snaring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino for a movie and hiring Michael Bay to direct. With Tone as sonic auteur, it's little wonder that Jay-Z and Kelly's vaunted collaboration amounted to a mediocre pop record.

The big question surrounding Unfinished Business is therefore twofold: Why would R. Kelly and an ostensibly retired Jay-Z release a follow-up to their flop? More importantly, why would they once again hire Tone to man the boards? Less an album than the sonic equivalent of a particularly obnoxious episode of MTV's Cribs, Unfinished Business doesn't provide much of an answer to either question, beyond mere stubbornness. With Both Worlds' sequel, Kelly and Jay-Z try to turn a loss into a win, but they can't be bothered to fix a losing formula. There's a cynical symmetry at play: Money serves not only as the album's primary subject, but also its reason for being and its ultimate goal. It's all about the benjamins, which wouldn't be a problem had Kelly and Jay-Z created something more than another forgettable party album full of interchangeable club songs.

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Unfinished Business comes alive only toward the end. 'Break Up (That's All We Do)' scores as the sort of infectious pop Jay-Z and Kelly should be capable of churning out easily, while 'Don't Let Me Die' amplifies the disc's abundant cheese to operatic levels, complete with a choir and an unhinged Kelly vocal. But rather than the best of both worlds, Unfinished Business mostly offers the superficial worst of both artists. Kelly and Jay-Z spend the album balling, shot-calling, and watching their dough stack up into Mount Everest-sized piles, but it only makes them seem as if they're too big to learn from their mistakes.

After Jay and Kelly reconnected at the Fade to Black show, in late 2003, a decision was made for them to continue the work of Best of Both Worlds, and use up the leftover songs they had from those sessions. Released October 26, 2004, this record wasn’t plagued by the problems of the first, and a video for first single “Big Chips” was released prior to the album’s release.

The album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 215k first week and going on to achieve platinum status. It featured performances from Memphis Bleek, Foxy Brown, Twista and even Slick Rick. The records were recorded remotely by Jay and Kells, rarely did they have a session together in the studio, preferring to email each other their respective parts.

They toured on the back of the release, titling it the Best of Both Worlds Tour, an unmitigated disaster which saw Kelly leave halfway through, and Jay continue on presenting a solo show “with friends.” After Kelly removed himself from a particular NY show, Jay went on Hot 97 with Angie Martinez to air out his grievances:

This is just disrespectful, [leaving the New York date]. Everybody better grab their Best of Both Worlds albums, because that’s it. It’s too much. Certain things aren’t meant to be.

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Jay would later tell The Breakfast Club:

The hardest thing ever was going through those R. Kelly albums, you know he, it’s just, you never know how the situation is going to turn out. There’s an X Factor that you can’t even calculate in your mind, that can happen at any moment, and you’ll be like, in the hotel ready to make an announcement, it’s like ‘what?! what just happpened?’

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Jay’s associate Ty-Ty was charged after the incident in New York, for pepper spraying Kelly when he tried to make his way to the stage.