JAY Z ON HIS RAGS-TO-RICHES STORY, WOOING BEYONCÉ, AND HOW BLUE IVY IS HIS “BIGGEST FAN”
Shawn Carter, better known as Jay Z, tells Vanity Fair contributing
editor Lisa Robinson in the November issue that although his wife,
Beyoncé, says that their 18-month-old daughter, Blue Ivy, prefers Jay’s
music to hers, he’s not so sure. “That’s not true. She does like her
mother’s music—she watches [Beyoncé’s concerts] on the computer every
night. But my album came out and I don’t know if Blue ever heard any of
my music prior to this album—she’s only 18 months old and I don’t play
my music around the house. But this album was new, so we played it. And
she loves all the songs. She plays a song and she goes, ‘More, Daddy,
more . . . Daddy song.’ She’s my biggest fan. If no one bought the Magna
Carta [album], the fact that she loves it so much, it gives me the
greatest joy. And that’s not like a cliché. I’m really serious. Just to
see her—‘Daddy song, more, Daddy.’ She’s genuine, she’s honest, because
she doesn’t know it makes me happy. She just wants to hear it.”
Jay tells Robinson that Barack Obama’s 2008 election “actually renewed
my spirit for America. It was like, Oh, wow, man, this whole thing about
land of the free, home of the . . . it’s, like, real—it’s going to
happen, everyone’s getting to participate in it. But growing up, if you
had ever told a black person from the hood you can be president, they’d
be like, I could never . . . If you had told me that as a kid, I’d be
like, Are you out of your mind? How?”
Jay tells Robinson that his mother knew he was dealing drugs as a
teenager, “but we never really had those conversations. We just pretty
much ignored it. But she knew. All the mothers knew. It sounds like ‘How
could you let your son . . . ’ but I’m telling you, it was normal.”
Jay’s checkered past taught him a few things that he says will come in
handy in his new role as a sports agent: “I know about budgets. I was a
drug dealer,” he tells Robinson. “To be in a drug deal, you need to know
what you can spend, what you need to re-up. Or if you want to start
some sort of barbershop or car wash—those were the businesses back then.
Things you can get in easily to get out of [that] life. At some point,
you have to have an exit strategy, because your window is very small;
you’re going to get locked up or you’re going to die.”
Speaking about his childhood, Jay tells Robinson they did the best they
could to make ends meet: “We were living in a tough situation, but my
mother managed; she juggled. Sometimes we’d pay the light bill,
sometimes we paid the phone, sometimes the gas went off. We weren’t
starving—we were eating, we were O.K. But it was things like you didn’t
want to be embarrassed when you went to school; you didn’t want to have
dirty sneakers or wear the same clothes over again.”
While he was growing up, Jay says, “crack was everywhere—it was
inescapable. There wasn’t any place you could go for isolation or a
break. You go in the hallway; [there are] crackheads in the hallway. You
look out in the puddles on the curbs—crack vials are littered in the
side of the curbs. You could smell it in the hallways, that putrid
smell; I can’t explain it, but it’s still in my mind when I think about
it.”
Jay tells Robinson he sold crack but never used it, and when asked if he
ever felt guilty about contributing to what was becoming an epidemic,
he says, “Not until later, when I realized the effects on the community.
I started looking at the community on the whole, but in the beginning,
no. I was thinking about surviving. I was thinking about improving my
situation. I was thinking about buying clothes.”
Jay says that when he and Beyoncé were both featured on the cover of
Vanity Fair’s 2001 Music Issue “we were just beginning to try to date
each other.” Try? “Well, you know, you’ve got to try first. You got to
dazzle . . . wine and dine.” He tells Robinson that “of course” he
pursued Beyoncé, and when asked if he hadn’t been Jay Z—say, he had been
a gas-station attendant and she pulled up—would he have been able to
date her, he responds, “If I’m as cool as I am, yes. But she’s a
charming Southern girl, you know, she’s not impressed. . . . But I would
have definitely had to be this cool.” Jay confirms that the line on his
latest album, “She was a good girl ’til she knew me” is about Beyoncé,
and when Robinson asks if she’s not a good girl anymore, Jay laughs,
saying, “Nah. She’s gangsta now.”
As for the rumors of Beyoncé’s not really having been pregnant with
their first child, Jay tells Robinson, “I don’t even know how to answer
that. It’s just so stupid. You know, I felt dismissive about it, but
you’ve got to feel for her. I mean, we’ve got a really charmed life, so
how can we complain? But when you think about it, we’re still human
beings. . . . And even in hip-hop, all the blogs—they had a field day
with it. I’m like, We come from you guys, we represent you guys. Why are
you perpetuating this? Why are you adding fuel to this ridiculous
rumor?”
Jay tells Robinson that he and Beyoncé trademarked their daughter’s name
simply so others couldn’t exploit it for profit. “People wanted to make
products based on our child’s name,” he says, “and you don’t want
anybody trying to benefit off your baby’s name. It wasn’t for us to do
anything; as you see, we haven’t done anything.”
Jay knows to the penny how much money he has, he tells Robinson, but
won’t divulge the amount; when told that Forbes estimated his net worth
at around $500 million, he dismisses it as a “guesstimate” and says he’s
not motivated by money. “I’m not motivated by that. . . . I don’t sit
around with my friends and talk about money, ever. On a record, that’s
different.”
Jay admits that, after all these years, he still loves to rap. “I know I
said I wouldn’t be doing it when I was 30,” he tells Robinson, “so
that’s how I know I love it. Thirty years old was my cutoff, but I’m
still here, 43 years old.”
