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Problem child was destined to succeed

A hugely successful rap star and entrepreneur, Jay-Z learned from the school of hard knocks, writes Barry Egan

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By Barry Egan
Sunday May 4 2008

TALK about booty. And I'm not just referring to his partner's derriere. Jay-Z's estimated worth is more than $420m.

The man from the Marcy housing project in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn -- whose father abandoned him when he was 12 -- is one of the owners of basketball team, the Nets.

Last year architect Frank Gehry, who had submitted plans for the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, where the Nets will move from their base in New Jersey, sent Jay a stack of James Joyce novels.

Because, he said, listening to tapes of Joyce reading Finnegan's Wake reminded Gehry of hip-hop. Presumably when Jay-Z was walking past the newsstands in Las Vegas last weekend he was effecting a face of bafflement like he was perusing a copy of Joyce's easy-read for the first time.

The cover of People magazine on the newsagent in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas screamed it loud and clear. The Inside Story: Beyonce & Jay-Z's Secret Wedding. Backstage at his show in the MGM Grand Arena, the rapper-mogul isn't letting on that he married the former Destiny's Child frontwoman and his girlfriend of six years, Beyonce Knowles, on April 4 at a top secret ceremony in his 10,000 square foot Manhattan penthouse.

It was a romantic evening marked with 70,000 white orchids and attended by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Mary J Blige, all of whom were allegedly told to leave their Blackberries and cell phones behind. That didn't stop the world's media speculating. To his credit, Jay-Z never once acts as if the jig is up.

From the stage last Saturday night in Las Vegas, in front of 10,000 fans, the 38-year-old hip-hop czar and chief executive of Def Jam Records -- home to several generations of major rappers including LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy -- made no mention of any sensually bootied new wife.

At one point, while DJ-ing in the middle of his two-hour-long set, he dramatically puts on the opening groove of Crazy In Love by a certain Beyonce only to just as theatrically take it off again. "Sorry, B," Jay-Z quips with winking smile as the crowd react with gargantuan appreciation and applause. A possible future Prez of the US of A was recently choc a block full of appreciation for Beyonce's other half.

"I gotta admit -- lately I've been listening to a lot of Jay-Z," Barack Obama said. "This new American Gangster album is [good]. Kanye, I like. I enjoy some of the newer stuff. Honestly, I love the art of hip-hop. I don't always love the message of hip-hop."

During a recent campaign rally in Raleigh, Obama made an obvious reference to Jay-Z when he repeatedly appeared to brush imaginary dirt off his shoulder. One critic called it a seminal moment in the Democratic campaign: "The merging of politics and pop culture: in which a presidential candidate and self-confessed hip-hop head references a rap hit and a dance move."

The man whose hard-edged urban R&B music is prominent on Obama's iPod took Sin City by a veritable desert storm last weekend. It was Saturday night fever with the mostly black crowd trying not not to laugh at the seat-wettingly embarrassing attempts of the whiteys in the audience -- ginger whiteys like me -- to dance like they were born to the funk-heavy grooves of Jay-Z and his crew. "You look like you're dancing to a different record," Jay-Z chided them thus at one point as I looked shamefacedly down at my white Adidas runners (joke).

Behind him on the screen, flashes images of the Ku Klux Klan, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and then the aforesaid Barack Obama. In many ways, rappers like Jay-Z are

the logical descendants of the black civil rights activists of Sixties America. With President Bush's smiling visage on the screen behind him, Jay-Z recites a rap poem about Hurricane Katrina before segueing into a homage to his pal Obama.

"Are you ready for change?" he asks the crowd. "I said, are you are ready for change?" (Intriguingly, the young black woman beside me says she will be voting for neither Obama nor Clinton but that vision of youthful vigour and dispatch, John McCain.)

The politicing bit over, Jay-Z gets down to business. "The rap boys are in Vegas tonight," he chants. "Las Vegas knows how to party like no other town, and a party in Las Vegas is like a party in no other town." Decked out in black trainers and matching tracksuit and top, Jay-Z raps out the polemic bon mots to 99 Problems with the riffs from AC/DC's Back in Black bouncing through the groove. The crowd go bug-eyed mental. Jay-Z goes straight into It's A Hard Knock Life with the audience singing the words back to him: "Instead of treated, we get kicked/Instead of kisses, we get kicked/It's a hard knock life." The band behind him are like George Clinton's P-Funk with Prince and Public Enemy joining in for good measure; not least on Jigga What, Jigga Who and Big Pimpin'.

The owner of Roc A Fella Records then sings Heart of the City from American Gangster, his album inspired by the Denzel Washington movie of the same name, and draws on Jay-Z's own experience as a drug hustler once upon a time. "When I saw the movie, the way Denzel portrayed the character, you know, we never seen a black guy ascend this high in a movie before, to being over the mob. So immediately that struck with me," Jay said recently. "Like, the success of it all. . . I took that emotion and pulled it into my song. So it's my own movie. I call it an indie film now."

In reality, Jay-Z's life has been like a Spike Lee movie. Emerging from childhood in the economically barren projects of Brooklyn, Shawn Carter became a teenage drug entrepreneur selling crack on the mean streets of Noo Yawk. In his 20s, he escaped that life to become one of rap's most successful purveyors. Someone who gets to hang out with Bono and Ali and have presidential hopefuls lick up to him. "Every black kid in America," said Kanye West, "looks up to Jay as a role model."

Jay-Z plays the RDS, Simmonscourt in Dublin on June 26 2008. Tickets are €65.70 from Ticketmaster outlets nationwide 0818 719 300. Jay-Z is also playing Live at the Marquee in Cork on June 25.

- Barry Egan