Jay-Z: How I went from rags to riches
By STEFANIE COHEN - New York Post
Jay-Z remembers the first time he heard someone rap. He was a kid walking through the Marcy Houses in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where he grew up, and he stumbled on a circle of kids. When he peeked inside, he saw an older kid he hardly knew, acting like ladies in church touched “by the spirit” — rhyming couplets, as if possessed. It went on for more than half an hour and the young Jay-Z, a k a Shawn Carter, was entranced.
The young boy thought it was cool. His next thought: “I could do that,” he writes in his new book “Decoder,” an autobiography out Nov. 16 that interprets lyrics to 36 of his songs. The book is being released with a bang, with one of the most unusual marketing campaigns in recent memory. As part of the campaign, Jay-Z is releasing every single page to the public before the book hits store on November 16.
He addresses his past, including allegations of drug selling, stabbings, and life as a hustler during the crack-ravaged 80s. The book also deals with Jay-Z’s fractious relationships with assorted rap stars, including MC Hammer.
In the book he recounts being inspired by his mother, Gloria, who bought him a three-ring binder. He began to carry it everywhere, scribbling down rhymes about the things he saw and heard. Every night, he’d hide the notebook under his bed — to make sure no one ripped off his words. He read dictionaries in his spare time to increase his vocabulary, and before he was high school age he was taking part in rap battles in the Marcy projects, hoping to become known as “the best poet on the block.”
Jay-Z lived with his mother, a clerk at an investment firm, his father, Adnis Reeves, two older sisters and an older brother in apartment 5C in the Marcy Houses.
When Jay-Z was 11, his father left home for good. Soon after, the young boy — who was a good student at he various high schools he attended in Brooklyn, despite rarely studying — would drop out and start dealing crack.
Now, at 41, he’s one half of the richest entertainment couple in the world, along with his wife, Beyoncé, according to Forbes. The pair earned $122 million last year alone and Jay-Z’s total worth was $450 million in 2010. He’s had more No. 1 albums than Elvis, with 11 albums to his name and 10 Grammy awards. In “Decoder,” he writes for the first time how his training as a crack dealer and hustler helped him understand business and turned him into an artist telling the story of the street in rhyme.
* Crack Comes to Town
Although he was starting to find his voice as a rapper, young Shawn didn’t have a story yet. But all that changed when crack hit the inner city. His neighbors became crackheads before his eyes. And Jay-Z started dealing to them.
“Authority was turned upside down,” he writes. Kids his age began selling crack to pay their mothers’ electric bills. They were armed with automatic weapons. Jay-Z started hustling crack at 13, and eventually would have his own crew in Trenton, NJ, and later in Maryland. He was still writing rhymes, but he made his living slinging crack. And he would spend the rest of his life writing about the more than 13 years he spent dealing drugs.
* His First Arrest
Jay-Z’s first arrest came at age 16. He was dealing in Trenton, because his friend “Hill” had a supplier there. Hill had enrolled in the local high school, and one day when Jay-Z went to meet him, he got caught with crack in his pockets on the campus. Since he had no prior arrests, the police let him go, but they confiscated his supply. In order to make up the cash to the supplier, Jay-Z had to go back to Marcy and deal crack 60 hours straight — three days in a row, he writes. He kept awake by “eating cookies and writing rhymes on the back of brown paper bags.”
WireImage
Jay-Z and Beyoncé
* Getting Away With It
Soon Jay-Z was onto bigger deals. He and his crew traveled up and down the East Coast, sourcing and unloading drugs. Jay-Z recounts the time, in 1994, when he was driving down I-95. He had a stash of crack in a fake compartment in the sunroof of his Maxima when he got pulled over by cops for “no good reason.” The police knew they couldn’t search his car without probable cause, so they called the K-9 unit — the dogs would be able to sniff out the drugs. But the unit didn’t show up, and the cops had to let him go. A minute later, he saw the K-9 unit speeding down the highway in the other direction, but too late — he was already home free. It’s a moment he would later recount in his 2004 hit song, “99 Problems” with the lyric: “I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” At the time, Jay-Z was slammed for the misogynistic use of the word “bitch” — but, as he reveals in his book, he was actually referring to a female dog, or the dogs that never caught up to him that day. “It would have changed my life if that dog had been a few seconds faster,” he writes.
By STEFANIE COHEN - New York Post
Jay-Z remembers the first time he heard someone rap. He was a kid walking through the Marcy Houses in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where he grew up, and he stumbled on a circle of kids. When he peeked inside, he saw an older kid he hardly knew, acting like ladies in church touched “by the spirit” — rhyming couplets, as if possessed. It went on for more than half an hour and the young Jay-Z, a k a Shawn Carter, was entranced.
The young boy thought it was cool. His next thought: “I could do that,” he writes in his new book “Decoder,” an autobiography out Nov. 16 that interprets lyrics to 36 of his songs. The book is being released with a bang, with one of the most unusual marketing campaigns in recent memory. As part of the campaign, Jay-Z is releasing every single page to the public before the book hits store on November 16.
He addresses his past, including allegations of drug selling, stabbings, and life as a hustler during the crack-ravaged 80s. The book also deals with Jay-Z’s fractious relationships with assorted rap stars, including MC Hammer.
In the book he recounts being inspired by his mother, Gloria, who bought him a three-ring binder. He began to carry it everywhere, scribbling down rhymes about the things he saw and heard. Every night, he’d hide the notebook under his bed — to make sure no one ripped off his words. He read dictionaries in his spare time to increase his vocabulary, and before he was high school age he was taking part in rap battles in the Marcy projects, hoping to become known as “the best poet on the block.”
Jay-Z lived with his mother, a clerk at an investment firm, his father, Adnis Reeves, two older sisters and an older brother in apartment 5C in the Marcy Houses.
When Jay-Z was 11, his father left home for good. Soon after, the young boy — who was a good student at he various high schools he attended in Brooklyn, despite rarely studying — would drop out and start dealing crack.
Now, at 41, he’s one half of the richest entertainment couple in the world, along with his wife, Beyoncé, according to Forbes. The pair earned $122 million last year alone and Jay-Z’s total worth was $450 million in 2010. He’s had more No. 1 albums than Elvis, with 11 albums to his name and 10 Grammy awards. In “Decoder,” he writes for the first time how his training as a crack dealer and hustler helped him understand business and turned him into an artist telling the story of the street in rhyme.
* Crack Comes to Town
Although he was starting to find his voice as a rapper, young Shawn didn’t have a story yet. But all that changed when crack hit the inner city. His neighbors became crackheads before his eyes. And Jay-Z started dealing to them.
“Authority was turned upside down,” he writes. Kids his age began selling crack to pay their mothers’ electric bills. They were armed with automatic weapons. Jay-Z started hustling crack at 13, and eventually would have his own crew in Trenton, NJ, and later in Maryland. He was still writing rhymes, but he made his living slinging crack. And he would spend the rest of his life writing about the more than 13 years he spent dealing drugs.
* His First Arrest
Jay-Z’s first arrest came at age 16. He was dealing in Trenton, because his friend “Hill” had a supplier there. Hill had enrolled in the local high school, and one day when Jay-Z went to meet him, he got caught with crack in his pockets on the campus. Since he had no prior arrests, the police let him go, but they confiscated his supply. In order to make up the cash to the supplier, Jay-Z had to go back to Marcy and deal crack 60 hours straight — three days in a row, he writes. He kept awake by “eating cookies and writing rhymes on the back of brown paper bags.”
WireImage
Jay-Z and Beyoncé
* Getting Away With It
Soon Jay-Z was onto bigger deals. He and his crew traveled up and down the East Coast, sourcing and unloading drugs. Jay-Z recounts the time, in 1994, when he was driving down I-95. He had a stash of crack in a fake compartment in the sunroof of his Maxima when he got pulled over by cops for “no good reason.” The police knew they couldn’t search his car without probable cause, so they called the K-9 unit — the dogs would be able to sniff out the drugs. But the unit didn’t show up, and the cops had to let him go. A minute later, he saw the K-9 unit speeding down the highway in the other direction, but too late — he was already home free. It’s a moment he would later recount in his 2004 hit song, “99 Problems” with the lyric: “I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” At the time, Jay-Z was slammed for the misogynistic use of the word “bitch” — but, as he reveals in his book, he was actually referring to a female dog, or the dogs that never caught up to him that day. “It would have changed my life if that dog had been a few seconds faster,” he writes.
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