Def Jam, impressed with Roc-A-Fella’s early independent success, agreed to sign a joint venture with the young imprint on one condition: They needed seven albums from Jay. And now, two decades (and two dozen solo LPs) later, Jay-Z has become one of music’s all-time most important voices. His catalogue contains some of the most potent imagery and lucid storytelling about poverty and the desperation that it breeds, all while dominating mainstream pop music, in a delicate tightrope act that almost no one else has ever been able to manage for the span of time that Jay has. His merging of thinking-man street raps with commercial hits paved the way for artists like Kendrick Lamar and J. Jay-Z’s adolescence coincided with the Reagan ’80s. He’d spend his time banging on the kitchen table at his 534 Flushing Avenue apartment, rhyming to the percussion he created. But as an adolescent, he put his hobby on the backburner and crack sales on the front.
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