American Gangster was met with widespread critical acclaim. At
Metacritic, which assigns a
normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an
average score of 83, based on 25 reviews. According to
The Observers Steve Yates, "it's Jay-Z's and
American Gangsters triumph that reflecting on his appetite seems to have reawakened it".
Nathan Rabin from
The A.V. Club called the record a "surprisingly strong return to form",
Greg Kot was impressed by the complexity of Jay-Z's metaphors about drug trafficking, making music, and relationships; he wrote in the
Chicago Tribune that the rapper offers the kind of multidimensional lyrics that characterize classic hip-hop. Some reviewers expressed reservations.
Kelefa Sanneh wrote in
The New York Times that Jay-Z's reluctance to indulge in the
gangsta rap lyricism of his past resulted in wavering, equivocal songs such as "No Hook" and "Say Hello". "Once, words just seemed to flow out of him, as if he couldn't help himself", Sanneh said. "Now it's clearer than ever that he's choosing them carefully." Louis Pattison of
NME was more critical and called it a regression from the "slightly bloated"
Kingdom Come, lamenting the shortage of "don't-give-a-fuck attitude" highlighted on "Success" in favor of less effective raps exploiting Jay-Z's entrepreneurial personage. In
MSN Music,
Robert Christgau cited "Say Hello" and "Blue Magic" as highlights while humorously using sampled film dialogue from the latter track to frame his lukewarm opinion of the album: "Jay-Z, that's a
brand name, like
Pepsi, that's a brand name – he stands behind it, he guarantees it, even if you don't know him any more than you know the chairman of
Universal Music". He later assigned it a
one-star honorable mention.
American Gangster was ranked in the top ten of several music publications' end-of-year lists, including
The Austin Chronicle (number one),
Spin (number eight), and
Rolling Stone magazine (number three).
Rolling Stone also named the album's second single, "Roc Boys (And the Winner Is)...", the best single of 2007. In
The Village Voices annual
Pazz & Jop critics poll,
American Gangster finished 18th in the best albums voting. In an interview with Jeff Johnson of cable network
BET, President
Barack Obama said he was a fan of the album. ==Commercial performance==