- Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded · 2007
- Dangerously in Love · 2003
- Nothing Was the Same (Deluxe) · 2013
- Certified Lover Boy · 2021
- Watch the Throne (Deluxe) · 2011
- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy · 2010
- Magna Carta... Holy Grail · 2013
- The Hits Collection, Vol. One (Deluxe Edition with Videos) · 2009
- Watch the Throne · 2011
- The Hits Collection, Vol. One (Deluxe Edition with Videos) · 2009
- 4:44 · 2017
- BEYONCÉ · 2013
- good kid, m.A.A.d city (Deluxe Version) · 2012
Essential Albums
- 2017
- New York’s finest fakes an extravagant, immaculately produced final bow.
- JAY Z’s swagger is unmatched on a New York City rap staple.
- 1996
- 2017
- 2011
- 2011
- 2009
Artist Playlists
- This kingpin with the heart of a poet carries a torch for New York hip-hop.
- The lush life mixes with grittier imagery.
- Year after year, Shawn Carter lays down the blueprint for others to follow.
- The rap cats behind Mr. Carter's mafioso style and jiggy flavors.
Singles & EPs
Live Albums
Compilations
- Pharrell Williams
- Flawless
More To Hear
- Annie’s original Broadway run ended, but its influence is forever.
- “’03 Bonnie & Clyde” launched two decades of Jay and Bey collabs.
- Q-Tip plays a mix of JAY-Z joints for his birthday.
- Dotty celebrates Hov's birthday with a two-hour special.
- Lowkey and Clark Kent celebrate 25 years of Jay-Z’s debut album.
About JAY-Z
Growing up in central Brooklyn (“I’m from Marcy Houses, where the boys die by the thousand”), Shawn Carter wrote rhymes everywhere: standing at a streetlight, on the backs of brown-paper bags, banging out beats on his windowsill to find the rhythm. His childhood was violent: He started selling crack in his early teens and later quipped that getting a gun in Bed-Stuy was easier than getting public assistance. By the time he released 1996’s Reasonable Doubt, he said he was the oldest 26-year-old you’d ever want to meet.
Jay-Z (born in 1969) didn’t romanticize the streets (“Recruited lieutenants with ludicrous dreams of gettin’ cream/‘Let’s do this,’ it gets tedious”), but he never claimed remorse for them either. Even as he ascended to the executive suite—a move that not only rechristened rappers as the vertically integrated businessmen they already were, but also opened up new paths for black artists navigating corporate America—he remained stoic, a little ruthless, playful about a past that most might not have come back from.
Add to it a dexterity on the mic—not to mention a deep, intuitive love for language—that helped bring rap out of the yes-yes-y’all era and into another in which MCs functioned as American griots, chroniclers of the black American experience whose chains flashed bright but whose words flashed even brighter. And forgive the pun, but there’s still no real blueprint for him: Past 50, a billionaire, married with children—not only capable of artistic growth (as he proved so eloquently on 2017’s 4:44), but also willing to embrace it.
- HOMETOWN
- New York, NY [Brooklyn]
- BORN
- December 4, 1969