H I P H O P M AT T E R S

album to hold down the top spot longer than Jay-Z in 1998 was the

soundtrack to Titanic. Prior to his success in October, Jay-Z had never spent more than one week on the Billboard Top Ten. It was, as Mayfield wrote, �śa world gone mad.”

. . .

The life and times of Jay-Z reveal much about the rise of the hip-hop nation in the late 1990s. Born Shawn Corey Carter in December of

1969 Jay-Z came of age in the rough-and-tumble world of the Marcy

projects in Brooklyn. The last of four kids Jay-Z grew up shy accord-ing to his mother, Gloria Carter. Though he brought her very little pain at birth, Shawn would manage to bring her considerable pain

and anxiety later as a teen. He grew up admiring the swagger and

style of local street hustlers. Despite a sharp mind, he opted for the lessons oĆłered by the streets instead of school. His baptism into the merciless waters of street hustling came as the crack cocaine economy hit poor ghetto communities hard, making an already bad situ-

ation even worse.

�śBack then,” Jay-Z remembers, �śI would say it was, like, two

things. It was either you’re doin’ it or you was movin’ it.” He chose to move it. But even as he labored in America’s underground economy

Jay-Z also mapped out rhymes, songs, and even concepts for albums.

His ideas capture the tensions and the texture of the troubled world he was immersed in.

When it came time to record his first album Jay-Z, like all artists, had to figure out what he wanted to say to the world. On his debut

album Reasonable Doubt (1996, Roc-A-Fella Records/Priority), Jay-Z

tapped into the street experiences he knew so well. To the outside

world his rhymes about living and dealing in the streets might easily mark him as yet another studio gangsta seeking cheap thrills. But

he approaches the rap game with a style that, in many respects, is

notably refined.

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