Interview

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It would probably be a cliché to state that Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter is the opposite of the all-beef persona he proffers in song and video, but he is soft-spoken and polite. As he finishes his lunch at the Brooklyn studio where we did the photo shoot for this story, he asks for something to drink. “Snapple, I guess,” he says. “Bring me something red with that excess verbiage on the label. Although,” he laughs. “I guess that could be any of ’em.” He pays the kind of attention that’s reflected in his lyric choices.

Listen to tracks Jay-Z mentions throughout the article:

Whenever he digressed during our conversation, he would invariably interject something along the lines of, “But let me get back to your original question . . . ” and then finish his thought—the kind of attention to detail that he brings to bear as a writer, producer, and performer with a career that, arguably, represents one of the longest running periods of sustained success in the history of hip-hop. It’s a genre that he’s seen grow from its infancy to reach a crossroads, mirroring his own evolution from his twenties to his forties. (Jay-Z turned 40 in December.) In those terms, these past couple of years have quite possibly been among the most fascinating of Jay-Z’s life: from being quoted in gesture by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, who brushed some metaphorical “dirt” off his shoulder while giving a speech during the primaries in 2008; to signing on with Will Smith as a producer of the Broadway musical Fela!, about legendarily political Afrobeat artist Fela Kuti; to posting an old-school Zeitgeist hit such as “Empire State of Mind” in an era when video or radio play is of waning influence.

It was logical then that last fall Jay-Z dropped an album with the pressure-cooker title of The Blueprint 3 (Roc Nation), as if to remind himself that the pop world still has enormous expectations of him, yet things have indeed changed. He also possesses an acute awareness of who he is and what he has accomplished. We began the conversation talking about movies. He acknowledged Quentin Tarantino as an influence: “Man, the way Tarantino went back and forth in time, that’s it. I love Pulp Fiction (1994). I name-checked it before, but it was a big influence on my writing. If you listen to ‘Meet the Parents,’ the way he uses time as an element is big in that song.” He allows that Chuck D was right when he called rap the CNN of black America, but for Jay-Z, there’s more. “Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting  the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way. And I grew up in rap and movies the same way. I recently watched Once Upon a Time in America (1984) on a plane. Back in the day, Noodles”—played by Robert De Niro— “was my man. But when he rapes that girl, I couldn’t sit through it anymore. You come to realize that actions have consequences.” He was touching on the way movies bring us into whatever the characters are feeling at the moment. When this was pointed out, he sat back and nodded. His gift for bringing the way people talk into the way he walks in song works on both conscious and unconscious levels, a reminder that even in his music, Jay-Z has never lost sight of who—or what—he is.