Jay Z | New York Times Interview

Jay Z | New York Times Interview

Shawn Cory Carter aka Jay Z has to be one of my favorite people in the world.  Not just for what he did with hip hop, but how he literally changed the game.  The greatest rapper alive is becoming one of the greatest business minds and marketers of all time.

Hova is beginning to enter a new phase of his life.  Zadie Smith, of T Magazine was fortunate enough to sit down with Jay and get his thoughts on being a father, President Obama and the current state of music.  The full article is available here.

Below is an excerpt from the interview.

It’s difficult to know what to ask a rapper. It’s not unlike the difficulty (I imagine) of being a rapper. Whatever you say must be considered from at least three angles, and it’s an awkward triangulation. In one corner you have your hard-core hip-hop heads; the type for whom the true Jay-Z will forever be that gifted 25-year-old with rapid-fire flow, trading verses with the visionary teenager Big L — “I’m so ahead of my time, my parents haven’t met yet!” — on a “rare” (easily dug up on YouTube) seven-minute freestyle from 1995. Meanwhile, over here stands the pop-rap fan. She loves the Jiggaman with his passion for the Empire State Building and bold claims to “Run This Town.”

Finally, in the crowded third corner, stand the many people who feel rap is not music at all but rather a form of social problem. They have only one question to ask a rapper, and it concerns his choice of vocabulary. (Years pass. The question never changes.) How to speak to these audiences simultaneously? Anyway: I’m at a little table in a homey Italian restaurant on Mulberry Street waiting for Mr. Shawn Carter, who has perfected the art of triangulation. It’s where he likes to eat his chicken parms.