Jay-Z's Blueprint for success

Jay-Z. Photo / Supplied

I'm sorry, but Jay-Z?" spluttered Noel Gallagher in April 2008, riled at the thought of rap's finest performer headlining Britain's biggest music festival. "No chance. Glastonbury has a history of guitar music ... I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong."

It turned out it was Gallagher who was wrong. Jay-Z's Saturday night performance that year was a triumph, one that will go down in the festival's history. Hip-hop won over the rock traditionalists and it's a moment that it's hard not to reconsider in the light of recent events.

While Gallagher is dealing with the ignoble end of Oasis, Jay-Z is gearing up for the release of The Blueprint 3, his 11th studio album in 13 years: an occasion he's marking with a benefit concert at New York's Madison Square Garden in aid of the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund.

He does not even appear particularly worried that the album has already been leaked on the internet. "I must be the most bootlegged artist in history," he told MTV News.

"I'm excited for people to hear the album. I'm very proud of the work I've done, so enjoy it."

Perhaps it's easy for a man to be magnanimous when he's made US$35 million (NZ$50 million) from touring in the last 12 months alone.

The album also essays a novel notion - the maturing rapper. The genre was originally - and is still chiefly - a young man's game. Skills are asserted, boasting is a primary tool. Jay-Z, nearing 40, now takes a more relaxed approach. Or perhaps his reach now extends beyond music. As he notes on the album's opening track, What We Talkin' About: "I don't run rap no more, I run the map". Though he ignores their boundaries.

A week or so ago, fans at a free concert in Brooklyn were surprised to see the rapper (and his wife Beyonce) wigging out to psychedelic rock band Grizzly Bear. Later this month, he will support Coldplay at Wembley, London. (He is a close friend of the band's singer, Chris Martin.)

While it might say plenty about rap or, indeed, rock fundamentalism, few seem to move around genres with the ease of Jay-Z. Or at least it's something he is working on - plenty of swagger and smart production have hitherto been chief features of his music.

He described his Blueprint album as "all over the place because of my taste in music". He is obviously now eager to cast himself as a sort of rap David Bowie, ever keen to absorb diverse influences.

Unlike many of his peers, he also seems little concerned about protecting reputation or status, which is certainly a rarity in rap. Taking on support slots, as he will with Coldplay, is not something musicians of his power tend to do.

It's all about making connections, he says, in music and business.

"Traditionally," he notes, "if you were successful in rock'n'roll, that was a really bad thing. You had these guys selling 200m records with dirty T-shirts on. Hip-hop is about attaining wealth. People respect success.

They don't even have to like your music. If you're big enough, people are drawn to you."

Jay-Z was born Shawn Carter and his early years were spent in the Marcy Projects, a housing estate in Brooklyn, with his three siblings and his mother (his father left when he was 11). Though he rapped from the age of nine, he was a drug dealer until "about the age of 22".

He shot his brother in the shoulder when he was just 12, for stealing his jewellery, and at the start of his music career he was part of the nineties feud between East and West Coast rappers, a feud that led to the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Jay-Z's childhood friend, rapper Biggie Smalls.

Jay-Z had a long-running feud with rapper Nas (which saw his New York rival refer to him as "Gay-Z" on the track Ether). He was arrested for stabbing record producer Lance "Un" Rivera in 1999 and in 2001 received three years' probation for the assault, a sentence given the day after another charge, for gun possession, was dropped.

At the time, he said the sentence was "a wake-up call to let me know it could just all go down the drain; it could all be taken away". He promised it would never happen again and kept his word. He has not been in trouble with the law since.

His business success is certainly notable. He founded his first company, Roc-A-Fella Records, in 1996 so he could release his debut album after the major labels turned him down.

It was the first of many businesses. Since then, he's invested in a basketball team, built a fashion brand with the Rocawear label, and acquired sports bars and hotels. He has his own Champagne brand, Ace of Spades, and he's releasing fragrances for performers Rihanna, Kanye West and himself in 2010.

He's been phenomenally successful. He sold the rights to Rocawear in 2007 for US$204m and last year Forbes magazine estimated his annual income as US$82m. He wasn't lying when on the Kanye West track Diamonds From Sierra Leone, he raps: "I'm not a businessman/I'm a business, man."

As well as his own empire, he was president and CEO of Def Jam, the label that brought hip-hop to the mainstream, from 2005 until last year; there he helped guide the careers of Rihanna, Kanye West and Ne-Yo.

He resigned in 2008 so he could pursue a far more lucrative US$150 million deal with events company Live Nation. According to the New York Times, the deal includes an upfront payment of US$25 million, advance payments of US$10 million per album, US$20 million for publishing, licensing and other rights and, perhaps most enticing for Jay-Z, US$50 million to finance his own investments and company, Roc Nation, which includes a record label and music publishing.

Though there are other rap moguls, such as P Diddy and Russell Simmons, Jay-Z seems eager to impress that it's not solely the money but about trying things out.

He is not given to pretending that he still hangs out in the 'hood, but is currently deliberating whether to build an art gallery on a US$66 million site he's bought in Chelsea, New York, suggesting that he is hardly totally consumed by music.

In fact, he says he tried to retire at the age of 34. It lasted for three years and he admitted: "It was the worst retirement, maybe, in history." He used his time well, though, raising awareness of the global water shortage, and meeting UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2006.

Like his rock star friends Chris Martin and Bono, he argues that he can use music as a vehicle; rap has a more important message for the world than one of violence. He often talks about hip-hop as a way of life rather than just a music genre and he feels he's an ambassador for that lifestyle.

"Hip-hop has done so much for racial relations," he has said. "It's very hard to teach racism to a teenager who's listening to rap music and who idolises Snoop Dogg. Hip-hop has done that."

It may sound like an overblown statement but it's hard to deny the power of hip-hop, especially in America, when Barack Obama asked Jay-Z to help on the campaign trail in 2008. Obama even used the shoulder-brushing gesture associated with the Jay-Z song Dirt off Your Shoulder during a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 2008, the night after a particularly fierce debate with then rival Hillary Clinton.

"I felt, what time are we living in where a presidential nominee is making reference to a rapper?" said Jay-Z.

Jay-Z turns 40 this year, becoming "Gray-Z", as New York magazine quipped earlier this year. He's achieved a lot in those four decades - money, fame, artistic integrity, political importance and marrying Beyonce. (It's a relationship that both managed to keep so low key for many years that there was hardly an image of the pair together.)

There may be younger, edgier rappers snapping at his heels, but it's hard to imagine that Jay-Z cares much. There will be others who follow the whimsical, winding and impressive career path that Jay-Z has created.

- OBSERVER

LOWDOWN

WHO: Jay-Z, aka Mr Beyonce
BORN: Shawn Corey Carter on 4 December 1969, Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of four children. Raised by his mother. He went to high school with fellow rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Busta Rhymes, but dropped out to deal drugs.
BEST OF TIMES: Being made CEO of Def Jam, the company that signed the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J. Under Jay-Z's guidance, Rihanna, Ne-Yo and Kanye West launched their careers.
WORST OF TIMES: Facing the possibility of 15 years in jail in 1999 when he was arrested for assault after stabbing record producer Lance Rivera at a club in New York. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to three years' probation.
HE SAYS: "You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like,'I still go to the projects'. I'm like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighbourhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it's so cool?"