Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office

171 Pages·2011·0.91 MB·English

by  Zack O'Malley Greenburg

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction

Chapter 1 - A Hard Knock Life
Chapter 2 - The Roc-A-Fella Dynasty
Chapter 3 - Building a Notorious Brand
Chapter 4 - Jay-Z’s First Basketball Team
Chapter 5 - Early Retirement
Chapter 6 - Def Jam Takeover
Chapter 7 - Champagne Secrets
Chapter 8 - To Infinity—and Beyoncé
Chapter 9 - Net Gain
Chapter 10 - Who Killed the Jay-Z Jeep?
Chapter 11 - Reinventing the Roc
Chapter 12 - History and Beyond

Acknowledgements
NOTES
INDEX

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Copyright © Zack O’Malley Greenburg, 2011 All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Greenburg, Zack O’Malley.
Empire state of mind : how Jay-Z went from street corner to corner office / Zack O’Malley Greenburg. p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47607-9
1. Jay-Z, 1969-2. Rap musicians—United States—Biography. I. Title.
ML420.J29.G74 2011
782.421649092—dc22
[B] 2010035334

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For my parents—all three of them—and for Danielle
Introduction
At 12:10 a.m. on October 4, 1969, Brooklyn’s last Myrtle Avenue elevated train
rumbled off into the night.1 Two months later Shawn Corey Carter—better
known as Jay-Z—entered the world, making his first home in the nearby Marcy
housing projects. The sprawling complex of drab six-story brick buildings today
sits five blocks from the Myrtle Avenue line’s ghostly remains, a block-long
hollow structure that nobody ever bothered to knock down. During Jay-Z’s
formative years, the rest of Bedford-Stuyvesant was similarly neglected by the
authorities; as the drug trade flourished in the 1980s, lessons of supply and
demand were never farther than the nearest street corner. Even now, hallmarks of
Marcy’s past remain: the padlocked metal gates guarding each parking space, the
apartment numbers stenciled in white paint beneath street-facing windows to
help police catch escaping perpetrators, and, of course, the rusted railway
skeleton over Myrtle Avenue, just steps from the platform where the J and Z
subways now roll into a modern train station.
The following pages will explain just how Jay-Z propelled himself from the
bleak streets of Brooklyn to the heights of the business world. In making that
journey, he’s gone from peddling cocaine to running multimillion-dollar
companies, with worldwide stops at sold-out concerts along the way. Once Jay-Z
got going, it took him less than ten years to complete that voyage, thanks to
innate talents honed through hustling. His story is the American dream in its
purest form, a model for any entrepreneur looking to build a commercial empire.
Jay-Z wouldn’t be where he is today were it not for his remarkable abilities as
a rhymester and wordsmith. Most hip-hop buffs place him in rap’s pantheon,
alongside the likes of Rakim, KRS-One, Tupac Shakur, and the Notorious B.I.G.
Jay-Z’s first album, Reasonable Doubt, packs a life’s worth of lyrics into a single
disc, backed by beats thick with soul and jazz. Though his first album is still
considered one of hip-hop’s greatest, he garnered criticism for heading in a pop-
oriented direction in subsequent efforts. Jay-Z readily admits this was all part of
his plan to sell more records. “I dumbed down for my audience, doubled my
dollars,” he says in one song. “They criticize me for it, yet they all yell, ‘Holla.’
”2
While some of Jay-Z’s catchier choruses have drawn the scorn of purists,
radio hits like “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” were instrumental in