JAY-Z
FULL NAME
Shawn Corey Carter
BORN
4 December, 1969
Brooklyn, New York
GENRE
Hip hop
LABELS
Roc-A-Fella, Roc-Nation,
Universal
CURRENT SINGLE
Holy Grail (ft. Justin
Timberlake)
TWITTER
Follow @S_C_
2, 796, 975 + followers
FACEBOOK
17, 060, 324 + likes
WEBSITE
AWARDS
AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS
2000 Favorite Rap/Hip
Hop Artist
2009 Favorite Rap/Hip
Hop Artist
2009 Favorite Rap/Hip
Hop Album
BET AWARDS
2001 Best Male Hip Hop
Artist
2004 Best Male Hip Hop
Artist
2004 Best Collaboration
2010 Best Collaboration
2012 Best Group
2012 Video Of The Year
BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS
1998 R&B Albums
Artist Of The Year
1999 Rap Artist Of The
Year
BRIT AWARS
2010 Best International
Male Solo Artist
GRAMMY AWARDS
1999 Best Rap Album
2004 Best Rap/Sung
Collaboration
2004 Best R&B Song
2005 Best Rap Solo
Performance
2006 Best Rap/Sung
Collaboration
2008 Best Rap/Sung
Collaboration
2009 Best Rap Performance
By A Duo Or A Group
2010 Best Rap Song
2010 Best Rap Solo Performance
2010 Best Rap/Sung
Collaboration
2011 Best Rap/Sung
Collaboration
2011 Best Rap Song
2011 Best Rap Performance
By A Duo Or A Group
2012 Best Rap
Performance
2013 Best Rap
Performance
2013 Best Rap Song
2013 Best Rap/Sung
Collaboration
MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS
1999 Best Rap Video
2003 Best R&B Video
2004 Best Rap Video
2004 Best Direction In A
Video
2004 Best Editing In A
Video
2004 Best Cinematography
In A Video
2007 Video Of The Year
2007 Monster Single Of
The Year
2010 Best Cinematography
In A Video
BIO
One of the greatest living rappers — and certainly the most
inventive and consistently successful — Jay-Z has built a career on combining
nimble, braggadocious and largely autobiographical rhymes with adventurous
production that incorporates everything from snatches of classic R&B to
Broadway showtunes and Eighties electropop. Unlike some contemporaries, Jay-Z
views success not only in financial terms but artistic terms, and his music —
particularly later albums — were as interested in pushing hip-hop forward as
they were in garnering chart hits. Of course, he succeeded at both; over the
course of his career, he's racked up ten Number One albums.
Jay may have scaled staggering heights, but his beginnings were
famously humble. Born Shawn Carter, he was raised in Brooklyn's Marcy housing
projects, and his father walked out on his mother while he was still a boy.
With little other recourse, Jay took to the streets, eventually earning a
living by selling crack — an occupation that later provided the narrative for
some of his most potent songs. At around the same time he met the East Coast
rapper Jonathan Burks, who went by the name Jaz-O. In 1989, Jaz-O recorded a
song called "The Originators," which featured one of a young Jay-Z's
earliest verses. Though the similarities between their stage names are
striking, Jay insists the resemblance is coincidental, and that his name is a
re-working of his childhood nickname "Jazzy." In later interviews,
Jay would describe himself as a "reluctant rapper," focusing mainly
on the more lucrative occupation of selling drugs.
In 1996, however, his attentions began to shift. He and two
neighborhood friends, Damon Dash and Kareem Burke, formed Roc-A-Fella records
and issued Jay-Z's debut, Reasonable Doubt. A towering accomplishment from a
relatively unknown rapper, the album dealt frankly with Jay's adolescence on
the streets, making veiled references to the time he spent as a drug dealer
while showcasing an astounding lyrical dexterity (remarkably, it was later
revealed that Jay doesn't write his lyrics down) and a knack for multiple
styles of delivery. The album is rightly considered one of hip-hop's
foundational records, though it achieved only modest commercial success at the
time. Jay's next move was to try to convince his friend Jaz-O to sign to the
label, but Jaz refused — by most accounts because of a deep-seated suspicion of
the label's CEO Damon Dash. This caused tension between the two old friends,
which only escalated with Jay's increased success.
In 1997, Jay-Z released In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 which, coupled
with a guest verse on the Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death, saw his profile
begin to rise. The album wasn't roundly heralded, however; executive-produced
by P-Diddy and featuring a number of producers from the Bad Boy stable, the
album featured a significantly glossier sound than Reasonable Doubt, and its
ultra-commercial single "I Know What Girls Like" stands out as a rare
moment of gaudiness in Jay's otherwise restrained catalog.
He redirected with the follow-up, 1998's excellent Vol 2…Hard
Knock Life. Nicking the chorus of "Hard Knock Life" from the Broadway
musical Annie, Jay spun a tale of his own troubled adolescence and ended up
with his first bona fide radio hit, establishing his presence as a commercially
viable rapper who still had an eye to the streets. It was around this time that
rumors began circulating of a romantic connection between Jay and Beyonce
Knowles, then of the group Destiny's Child.
Vol 3…Life and Times of S. Carter arrived in 1999 with still
more hits — chief among them "Big Pimpin'," a collaboration with the
southern rap duo UGK. Jay's ascent was briefly halted, however, when he was
accused of stabbing the producer Lance "Un" Rivera at the Kit Kat
Club in December of that year. This was the beginning of a period of legal
turmoil for Jay. Though he would eventually admit to the stabbing, three days
before his trial he and his bodyguard were arrested when police found a gun
tucked into the waistband of his bodyguard's pants. Jay was eventually
sentenced to three years probation for the Riviera stabbing.
It was at this point Jay decided to keep his feuds relegated to
rap. At Hot 97s Summer Jam in 2001, he displayed a childhood picture of Mob
Deep's Prodigy dressed as a ballerina on the jumbotron. This was just a
preamble to his next record, The Blueprint, arguably one of the best of his
career and the album that saw him asserting his dominance in hip-hop. Not only
did he attack Mobb Deep but, more famously, he dismantled former friend Nas in "The
Takeover," accusing the rapper of inventing a backstory and claiming he
had lost his touch. This was the beginning of a long feud between Jay and Nas,
one that wasn't resolved until Jay signed Nas to Def Jam in 2007. The record
also featured production by Kanye West, who Jay would soon make a star in his
own right.
Perhaps feeling haughty, Jay followed The Blueprint with the
double-album The Blueprint 2 in 2002. The record, by most accounts, was
considered bloated, and Jay later trimmed it down to a single-disc called The
Blueprint 2.1.
Jay's ascent seemed unstoppable, but with The Black Album in
2003 came a surprising announcement: that he was retiring from hip-hop.
"There'll be no more full-length Jay-Z albums," he declared in an
interview at the time — and it seemed like he meant it. The record was a
searing reflection on his life and contained some of his most inspired and
bracing work. A film of his November concert at Madison Square Garden, called
Fade to Black, was released in 2004. That same year, he embarked on a tour with
R. Kelly in support of their Best of Both Worlds album, but it came to an
abrupt end when Kelly accused a member of Jay-Z's entourage of attacking him.
Shortly after, Jay's interests shifted from performing hip-hop
to presenting it. In 2005, he was accepted a job as president of the legendary
Def Jam label. Although his arrival was heralded, ultimately his performance at
Def Jam was mixed, yielding as many blockbusters as it did non-starters.
Jay received a similarly muted response to the first album he
released after his "retirement," 2006's Kingdom Come. It's not
difficult to see why: confronting topics like the government's failure to
respond to Hurrican Katrina, the water crisis in Africa and boasting guest spots
by the likes of Coldplay's Chris Martin, naysayers accused Jay of "going
soft," though in interviews Jay countered that the album was simply
"very adult."
This was just a dull spot in an otherwise exceptional year: in
June, he performed his classic debut, Reasonable Doubt in reverse order at New
York's Radio City Music Hall to accolades and the following year he restored
his reputation with an album inspired by the film American Gangster. Seeing
parallels between the life of gangster Frank Lucas and his own early days,
Jay-Z used the film's narrative as a template to tell his own story in stark,
vivid language, set against a backdrop of gritty soul hooks. Though it boasted
the vibrant single "Roc Boys," most of the record was tough and
contemplative, a return to the Jay-Z of Reasonable Doubt. Later that year, he
stepped down from his post as president of Def Jam, largely because parent
company Vivendi refused to meet his contractual demands.
In 2008, he was selected to headline the typically
guitar-friendly Glastonbury Festival, which drew ire from Oasis's Noel
Gallagher. Speaking to the BBC News, Noel insisted, "I'm not having
hip-hop at Glastonbury — it's wrong." In retaliation, Jay-Z opened his
Glastonbury set by playing a portion of "Wonderwall" on an acoustic
guitar before launching into a spirited version of his own "99
Problems." Noel later backpedaled somewhat, admitting that he liked
Jay-Z's music, though he still disapproved of his appearance at Glastonbury.
Jay released one of his most adventurous albums, The Blueprint
3, in 2009, and the record found him embracing a bevy of musical styles, from
electropop to rock and roll. In an interview with XXL he described the record
as "a new classic, because it uses classic sounds and
instrumentation." The record spawned the Number One single "Empire
State of Mind," which further established Jay as a hip-hop Sinatra. That
same year, he signed a 10-year, $150 million contract with the promoter
LiveNation, virtually banishing any thoughts of future retirement entirely.- http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/jay-z/biography
