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| Shawn Carter and Beyonce Knowles-Carter ripping it up at the MTV Video Music Awards 2003! |
From the NY Times:
Superstardom Is Boring: Jay-Z Quits
(Again)
By TOURÉ
Published: November 16, 2003
Jay-Z is bored with hip-hop. It was around 1 a.m. on a Thursday in late June, and he was in the V.I.P. room at the 40/40 Club, the sports bar he owns on West 25th Street in Manhattan. The professional basketball stars Antoine Walker and Tracy McGrady sat on one side of the room playing cards while Jay-Z was in a corner holding court with the producer Timbaland and the 18-year-old basketball phenom LeBron James, who seemed more interested in playing a video game on his cellphone. There was a neo-Rat Pack vibe to the scene: lounging millionaires, tall models playing pool, and a sexy waitress in a short skirt offering cognac and cigars. Jay-Z seemed to be on top of the world. But then he let slip that he would soon retire from hip-hop. His next album, "The Black Album," would be his last. "It's not like it was with Big and Pac," he said, referring to the rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, whose deaths in the late 90's ushered in a new era in hip-hop. "Hip-hop's corny now."
Jay-Z has threatened to quit before. He even declared that he would retire after his debut album. But this time he seems to mean it. In late October, at his recording studio on 26th Street, he said: "There'll be no more full-length Jay-Z albums. I might do a soundtrack in a year or two. Maybe a collaboration. But only after a year. I want to let it alone for at least a year."
Is it a publicity stunt? "Give me a little more credit than that," he said. "I could think of other ways to get attention."
For the last seven years Jay-Z has been one of the most influential and ubiquitous figures in hip-hop, releasing nine albums and performing on countless songs on soundtracks, mixtapes and other people's albums. His albums have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. Many of his songs are catchy and anthemic enough to become pop hits; yet he always deploys rhymes that are richly detailed and witty enough to maintain his bona fides within hip-hop. His rhyming is marked by a self-confidence so great it's infectious to the listener, an often laid-back flow that sounds at times almost as if he were talking and an ability to paint clear images with few words. "Jay-Z has great density," said Harry Allen, the hip-hop aficionado and journalist. "He writes very compact code. His lyrics do more per word than most artists'."
The landscape of hip-hop will change without him.
So why does an artist who is arguably at the top of his game decide to quit? "The game ain't hot," he said. "I love when someone makes a hot album and then you've got to make a hot album. I love that. But it ain't hot."
He recalled getting a phone call from a friend one night a few years ago. "He was like, `Yo, meet me up on 125th Street.' It was like we was doing a drug deal or something. So I shoot up there. He gets in my car and puts on `Who Shot Ya' " Notorious B.I.G.'s incendiary classic. "He knew what type of guy I am. If somebody makes something hot, I'm going to be inspired. The song comes on, and he's looking at me and sees me be like whoo! He got out and said: `Keep that. It's yours.' I went to the studio the next day and made four songs."
But hip-hop hasn't made him feel that way in years. Asked if his best work came five or six years ago, he said, "Absolutely."
A lack of competition has affected his creative process and made it hard for him to be as mentally engaged as he was in the past. "When I make lyrics now, I'm conscious of what I'm doing," he said. "I know when to give the trick, I know when to let off the pedal. Back then it was just zone. Now, as much as I try to get into that zone, I'm still conscious that I'm getting into that zone. I don't ever want to get to the point where I'm just making music because I know how to make a hit record. I want to make it because I love to make it. For me to do that I need to feed off other things."
Two years ago, he tried to spark himself by inciting a rhyme battle with the rapper Nas. The two dissed each other on records, back and forth, as all of hip-hop watched. Jay-Z now admits that he pushed what had been minor disagreement with Nas into a full-blown dispute because he was bored. "I had to go picking fights to get that excitement," he said.
At 33, Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) is old enough to remember the early 80's, when hip-hop was so new that a fan could own every cassette a store had in stock. Back then hip-hop culture seemed an underground fraternity. In the 90's, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Nas and Jay-Z emerged as gifted and fiercely ambitious rappers. For them, hip-hop was a competitive sport, their music supercharged by their desire to be viewed as the best rapper around. "I don't just want to sell records," Jay-Z said. "I came in the game to be nothing less than the best. I think every rapper should feel like they're the best. But I feel like some people are just making an album, putting in the club song, the thug song, the girl song. Don't try to make this type of record or that type of record. It has to be genuine. From the soul."
Jay-Z is in a position to retire because he's taken advantage of the vast financial opportunities afforded top rappers. Years ago rappers struggled to make money, battling with labels that paid them pennies and concert promoters fearful of booking them on national tours. But Jay-Z sells his records through Rocafella, a label he helped found, and he gets a much larger share of the profits from his albums than most artists. Island Def Jam Music Group has owned half of the company since 1997, and in 2002 paid $22 million to extend its partnership with the founders until 2005. He toured extensively this year, earning $100,000 a show, more than $3 million for the entire tour. He's also part owner of a clothing line, Rocawear, which, he says, will have $300 million in sales this year. In April Jay-Z became the first nonathlete with a signature sneaker when Reebok introduced the S. Carter Collection, which the company says is among the fastest sellers in its history.
He feels that his music is essential to all his business success. "They like me as a person," he said, referring to consumers. "Because of the music they know I put out good product. When you consistently put out good product, people start believing in your taste and your opinion."
Two years ago Lyor Cohen, the president of Island Def Jam, estimated that Jay-Z was worth more than $50 million. He can afford to be bored. "He has nothing to prove," said Damon Dash, the chief executive of Rocafella Records. "It's like when Evander Holyfield fights: `Like, dawg, you're the champ, you got four different belts. You could sit down.' "
There are no guest vocalists on "The Black Album," which was released last Friday, except his mother, Gloria Carter. His father left the family when Jay-Z was 11, and since then he and his mother have been extremely close. "I'm like her husband," he said.
He recorded her on her birthday, the night she was giving a party for herself at the 40/40 Club. He called her at home before the party. "She was running around, getting dressed," he recalled. "I said, `Why don't you come down to the studio?' I already had in my mind that I wanted her to open up the album. She was like, `For what?' Now, I knew if I told her that, she'd be nervous and worrying about it. So I said, `You know, just, uh, meet me down at the studio. Want you to, uh, hear some stuff.' So she came in and I got her to go in the booth and tell a couple of stories. She sounded so profound, like a speaker. I was like, wow."
On the song, called "December 4th" Jay-Z's birthday Ms. Carter recalls the change she noticed in her young son after she and her husband broke up. Jay-Z reveals much more about himself: "Now I'm just scratchin the surface/ cuz what's buried under there/ was a kid torn apart once his Pop disappeared/ I went to school/ got good grades/ could behave when I wanted/ but I had demons deep inside/ that would raise when confronted."
The album, one of Jay-Z's best though not as good as his two highlights, "Reasonable Doubt" and "The Blueprint," has a stellar list of producers: Timbaland, Kanye West, Eminem, Rick Rubin, Just Blaze, the Neptunes, all of whom command six figures to make a single song. Rappers are never given recording budgets large enough to pay six major league producers, but Jay-Z didn't need one. He called in favors. "I've rarely done a song that I got paid for in rap," he said, adding with a laugh, "I might have to pay a couple of the producers this time because they know I'm sneaking out the back door."
He seems to have no definite plans for the future. "I think he's going to sail off into the sunset," Mr. Dash, one of his partners in Rocafella, said. "He's got his club, he's got his girl" a reference to Jay-Z's girlfriend, the singer Beyoncé. "I'm sure different opportunities will present themselves. It feels like he wants to be a businessman now. But I'm sure he'll spit a verse here or there."
Jay-Z is working on an autobiography, "The Black Book," with the journalist dream hampton and plans to start another clothing line. "It'll be like the purple label for Rocawear," he said, referring to Ralph Lauren's top line. He wants to direct and produce big-budget Hollywood films.
And he looks forward to having a family. "I absolutely want kids," he said. "That's the only thing I really don't have."
Many fans are skeptical about the retirement talk and expect Jay-Z to pull a Michael Jordan and return in a few years. It's a possibility Mr. Dash concedes. "You never know with Jay," he said. "He's not a predictable dude."
Jay-Z said there was a chance he would come back, but the look in his eyes said that chance was remote. "Well, like Jordan said, `I've got to leave myself a window,' " he said. "If people take it back to when we were making hot albums and I'm just totally inspired and I'm like, I want in, then that could happen. But I don't foresee it.
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