Back in the 80s and 90s, rap albums just got released. No matter how big the artist, it was simply another album, and rarely a cultural event that had people up in the night, waiting to analyse every lyric. How Jay-Z must wish it were 1996 now, the year he released Reasonable Doubt without the weight of the world on his shoulders. No major rapper can release an album in such a vacuum in 2017, and in the case of Jay-Z’s 4:44, he can expect a special kind of attention.

This is due not only to the rapper’s enormous profile, but also because it is his first album since the release of Beyoncé’s Lemonade, an ambitious concept record whose beautifully targeted rage laid bare the precarious state of her marriage with Jay-Z. Shots were fired at his infidelity, at his inconstancy, at “Becky with the good hair”.

Does a husband and father deserve to have his private life laid bare so explicitly? It could be argued he brought it on himself – not just with his actions but with his hubris. After all, this is an MC whose last several – largely disappointing – albums, have been laced with tiresome references to his dream marriage, to having “the hottest chick in the game wearin’ my chain”. If you’re using up bars telling us everything is rosy, don’t be surprised when your wife decides to tell us everything isn’t.

A private life laid bare … Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Photograph: Dennis van Tine/PA

To be fair to Jay-Z, he deals with the speculation head-on with 4:44’s opening track, Kill Jay Z. Part mea culpa, part slaying of his id, it’s a bracingly honest dissection of his own failings as a man. He tells himself to cry more, to show a softer side, to do it for his daughter Blue. “You almost went Eric Benet / Let the baddest girl in the world get away,” he rhymes, referring to the soul singer who divorced Halle Berry in 2005. Deciding that honesty is the best policy, he also throws in thinly veiled digs at Future and Kanye West. It seems that Jay-Z’s fight with his own ego will not be a one-round knockout.

As much as there is appetite for lyrics about the state of affairs in Chez Knowles-Carter, there’s music to be considered as well. Sonically, 4:44 is a conservative affair, his longtime collaborator No ID opting for recognisable samples (Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sister Nancy’s much-used Bam Bam) in what seems like a concerted effort not to get in the way of Jay-Z’s confessional.

When the title track comes in, sounding like a Kanye West offcut, it’s hard not to think of Otis, the 2011 collaboration between the two. The song is a bleary-eyed, middle-of-the-night love letter to his wife, studded with several repetitions of “I apologise”. The next track, Family Feud, starts off by speaking to the rap fraternity old and new, but then swerves back to the nub of the matter: “I’ll fuck up a good thing if you let me / Let me alone Becky.”

But what is on offer for the rap fans who simply don’t care about Jay-Z’s personal life? Truthfully, not much. It’s a likable headphone album for the backpack-rap crowd, deliberately avoiding the sort of club anthem that might spoil the vibe. And, for all the self-analysis, it also smacks of commercial imperative. Lemonade propped up the Tidal streaming platform that Jay-Z owns, and 4:44 is almost certainly intended to bolster it further. If you want to say sorry to your wife, apparently it pays best to do it in public.