![]() Contrasting the radio-friendly sound of Jay-Z's previous work, The Blueprint features soul-based sampling and production handled primarily by Kanye West, Just Blaze, and Bink, as well as Timbaland, Trackmasters, and Eminem, who also contributes the album's sole guest feature.Īt the time of the album's recording, Jay-Z was awaiting two criminal trials, one for gun possession and another for assault, and had become one of hip hop's most dissed artists, receiving insults from rappers such as Nas, Prodigy, and Jadakiss. Recording sessions for the album took place during 2001 at Manhattan Center Studios and Baseline Studios in New York City. Its release was set a week earlier than initially planned in order to combat bootlegging. Jay-Z's most acclaimed album of this period was The Blueprint (2001), which would later land on many music critics' lists of the best albums of the decade. ", "Big Pimpin'", "I Just Wanna Love U", "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" and "03 Bonnie & Clyde", a duet with future bride Beyoncé Knowles. His most popular songs from this period include "Can I Get A. Over the span of those years, the rapper released a slew of No. The Dynasty sold over two million units in the U.S. This is also the first album where Jay-Z utilizes a more soulful sound than his previous albums. The album helped to introduce newcomer producers The Neptunes, Just Blaze, Kanye West, and Bink, which have all gone on to achieve notable success. In 2000, Jay-Z released The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, which was originally intended to become a compilation album for Roc-A-Fella artists but Def Jam turned into a Jay-Z album. "Hard Knock Life" marked the beginning of a fruitful period in which Jay-Z would become the biggest name in hip-hop. The title track, which famously sampled its chorus from the Broadway musical Annie, became Jay-Z's most popular single to date and won him his first Grammy nomination. Two years later, Jay-Z achieved even broader success with the 1998 album Vol. Reasonable Doubt established Jay-Z as an emerging star in hip-hop. Blige, and "Brooklyn's Finest," a collaboration with Notorious B.I.G. 23 on the Billboard charts, it is now considered a classic hip-hop album, featuring songs such as "Can't Knock the Hustle," featuring Mary J. In June of that year, Jay-Z released his debut album, Reasonable Doubt. ![]() It was at this point that Shawn Carter embraced the nickname Jay-Z, which was simultaneously an homage to Jaz-O, a play on Carter's childhood nickname of "Jazzy," and a reference to the J/Z subway station near his Brooklyn home.īut even though he had a stage name, Jay-Z remained relatively anonymous until he and two friends, Damon Dash and Kareem Burke, founded their own record label, Roc-A-Fella Records, in 1996. In 1989, he joined the rapper Jaz-O-an older performer who served as a kind of mentor-to record a song called "The Originators," which won the pair an appearance on an episode of Yo! MTV Raps. ![]() As Jay-Z later remembered his childhood in one of his songs ("December 4th"), "I went to school, got good grades, could behave when I wanted/ But I had demons deep inside that would raise when confronted."Ĭarter turned to rap at a very young age as an escape from the drugs, violence and poverty that surrounded him in the Marcy Projects. He attended Eli Whitney High School in Brooklyn, where he was a classmate of the soon-to-be-martyred rap legend Notorious B.I.G. The young rapper was raised by his mother, Gloria Carter, in Brooklyn's drug-infested Marcy Projects.ĭuring a rough adolescence, detailed in many of his autobiographical songs, Shawn Carter dealt drugs and flirted with gun violence. "He was the last of my four children," Jay-Z's mother later recalled, "the only one who didn't give me any pain when I gave birth to him, and that's how I knew he was a special child." Jay-Z's father, Adnes Reeves, left the family when Jay-Z was only 11 years old. Rapper Jay-Z was born Shawn Corey Carter on December 4, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York. He wed popular singer and actress Beyoncé Knowles in 2008. After selling millions of records with his own Roc-A-Fella label, Jay-Z created his own clothing line. He used rap as an escape, and appeared on Yo! MTV Raps in 1989. "I never lost sense of who I was, not for a day, not before I had a record deal, and certainly not after."īorn Shawn Corey Carter on December 4, 1969, Jay-Z grew up in Brooklyn's drug-infested Marcy Projects.
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