YouSaid · the spoken record

Jay-Z

lines on the record: 67
first: 2024-02-25
most recent: 2024-02-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Three best papers won the writers a trip to the city to see Annie on Broadway. That was a lie. I wrote that his kids in Brooklyn we hardly ever came into the city. That was true. I wrote that from that moment on or from the moment the curtain came up, I felt like I understood her story. Of course, I had never been to see Annie on Broadway, but I had seen the movie on TV. They bought it. They cleared it and I had one of my biggest hit. How bad do you want it?”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he did this song called Hard Knock Life. This is on his second album, if I'm not mistaken. It is before that, before Hard Knock Life, Jay-Z critically acclaimed, not something many records. After he sells 5 million records and he completely changes the trajectory of his entire career. And so they have to get clearance from that movie, like Little Annie. I forgot the little red-headed girl. I forgot Orphan Andy or whatever her name is. To use the song from Annie, we had to get clearance from the copyright holder. I wasn't surprised when the company that owned the rights sent our lawyers a letter turning us down. Laura knows what they thought it was going to wrap over that track. But I felt like the chorus of that song perfectly captured what little kids in the ghetto felt every day. Instead of kisses, we get kicked. So that's the hook, right? So I decided to write the company a letter myself after being rejected. I made up the story about how when I was a seventh grader in the ghetto, our teacher held an essay contest.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so he's talking about not trying to hide who he was essentially on being human. This is one of the great things that make rap at its best. It's so human. It doesn't force you to pretend to be only one thing or another, to be a saint or a sinner. It recognizes that you can be true to yourself and still have unexpected dimensions and opposing ideas. Having a devil on one soldier shoulder and an angel on the other is the most commenting in the world. The real bullshit is when you act like you don't have contradictions inside. that you don't have contradictions inside you. that you're so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A late record label, and again, this no doubt for myself many times in this book. A lot can change in the lifetime from five dudes and an SUV and sharing hotel rooms to a billionaire. Every time Dame left these meetings, he'd get so heated. He couldn't believe that they didn't get me. But I wasn't surprised. I expected nothing from the industry. I just try to shrug it off and I'd get back to my real life. Dame was getting frustrated trying to keep up with me. So he put together a makeshift tour to keep me focused on music. Sometimes Dame and his group and I would just pile into a pathfinder, a Toyota Pathfinder, or Nissan Pathfinder, sorry, and do shows up and down the East Coast. I was being a team player. I piled in the truck, stayed in the double rooms with the rest of them. In some ways, these were like my college days. Jay-Z didn't even graduate high school, if I'm mistaken. In some ways, these were like my college days, taking road trips, bunked up with friends, learning my profession, except that I still had a full-time job selling drugs.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to help people discover it. It's like stop dealing drugs, Jay. Take the rap shit seriously. You're good at it. Clark knew Dame was hungry, Dame Dash, was hungry for talent to represent, so he could break into the music industry and thought we'd make a good match. Dame walked into the room and room talking and didn't stop. He was a Harlem dude through and through flashy, loud, and animated. He projected bulletproof confidence.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he introduced, he's another important person, and Jay-Z's life. He made beats for him, put him in music business. He says, and he introduced him to a bunch of people. Clark Kent was the person who introduced me to Dame. Clark was pivotal at this stage in my life. In the mirror, all I saw was a hustler. Clark would find me and say, let's do this music. I appreciated him. Him, Clark Kent, Tai Tai, Bihai, all these other people. They would encourage me. But I was also skeptical about the business that I would also get, I was so skeptical about the business that I would get annoyed at them. Be high, which is his cousin, used to really come down hard on me. He was real honest and direct and told me straight up, he thought I was throwing my life away. Clark thought I had something. This is why, again, if we can encourage, especially younger people, like people, it's just so important. Clark thought I had something new to offer to this world that he loved. So he's saying, I love your music. You have something new, something valuable.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So now we get to the point where he describes this as literally crossing over from one life to another, from going from I'm a full-time drug and dealer to I'm a full-time rapper. All of these threads came together at a pivotal moment in me, the moment when I fully crossed over from one life to another. I was sitting across the table from Reuben Rodriguez. He was a music business vet wearing the uniform, double-breasted silk suit, pinky ring, tie. The room, the table, the view outside the window of a skyscraper, the whole scene was surreal to me. I'd been living like a vampire. The only people I'd seen in weeks were the people in my crew down south and of course the customers. The endless nighttime tide of fiends. My hands were raw from handling drugs and handling money. My nerves were shot from the pressure. Now is in this office, sitting next to me was Dame Dash. This is going to be one of his co-founders. He says Clark Kent, the producer, so Clark Kent was a well-known New York producer and DJ.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because you can learn from their experiences. You don't have to put in the 15 years that they put in. So Lear Cohen, who I consider my mentor, once told me something that he was told by a rabbi about the eight degrees of giving in Judaism. So I didn't know where this came from, but I've heard Jay-Z rap about this for. The seventh degree is giving anonymously. So you don't know who you're giving to and the person on the receiving end doesn't know who gave. The value of that is that the person receiving doesn't have to feel some kind of obligation to the giver and the person giving isn't doing it with an ulterior motive. The highest level of giving the eighth is giving in a way that makes the receiver self-sufficient.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His daughter in the book talks about they're living in a giant mansion and he'd bring up the fact that he would have to go to school, be around his peers and torn clothes, and he would shiver. Literally many decades later shiver at that thought. And what did Jay-Z just say? The sad shit is that you never really shake it all the way off, no matter how much money you get. It's the exact same idea Jay Z talks about the value of mentorship. Really think about this. The mentorship you either get in books or in person.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then he goes back to the burden of growing up poor and how you never, and I've seen this, what he's about to describe to us, I've seen this in a lot of the books that we read as well. The burden of poverty isn't just that you don't always have the things you need. It's the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life and that you do anything to lift that burden. I remember coming back home from doing work, so selling drugs out of state with my boys in a caravan of lexuses that we park right in the middle of Marcy. I ran up to my mom's apartment to get something and looked out at the window and saw those three new lexes gleaming in the sun. And I thought, man, we're doing it. In retrospect, yeah, that was kind of ignorant. But at the time, I could just feel that stink and shame of being broke lifting off of me, and it felt beautiful. The sad shit is that you never really shake it all the way off, no matter how much money you get. And so all the way back, I think it's like Founders 115 maybe, RX 116 actually. And it's Samuel Bromptman who grew up extremely poor in Canada.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so then he talks about the fact that his dad left and that hip hop took this as like, hey, we got to change this. The hip-hop generation never gets credit for this, but those songs change things in the hood. They were political commentary, but they weren't based on theory or books. They were based on reality on close observation of the world we grew up in. The songs weren't more realistic, but they created a stigma around certain kinds of behavior. Just by describing them truthfully and with clarity, one of the things we corrected was the absent father karma, our father's generation created. We made him, Jason puts it very eloquently, more eloquently than I could put it. And he says, we made it some real bitch shit to bounce on your kids. We as a generation made it shameful to not be there for your kids.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their character, how to listen to the matrix of a conversation, to what a person doesn't say. For my pops, it was just as important to take place, to take in places as people. He wanted me to know my own neighborhood inside and out. When I was walking with him, he'd always walk real fast. He said if someone following, he did that because if someone's following you, they'll lose you. And he expected not only to keep up with him, not only for you to keep up with him, but to remember the details of the things I was passing. He was teaching me to be confident and aware of my surroundings. There is no better survival skill that you could teach a boy in the ghetto, and he did it by showing.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is despicable, despicable behavior. Kids don't deserve that. You're the adult. You're the one that had the responsibility. You're the one that had the sex. You're the one that did the one that helped make that baby. It doesn't mean you have to be with the mom obviously and everything else, but you have to support your kid. And so Jay-Z talks a lot about that, not only these lyrics, but in the book about his generation really did their best to flip. because he's like it was extremely common that our mothers would race us. The dads were never around. And so we try to take that curse, that generational curse and fix it and be like, yo, if you do this, you're a sucker. That's the way he puts it. My father was crazy for detail. I get that from him. Even though he didn't, we didn't live together after I was nine. There are some things he instilled to me early that I never lost. There was nothing he missed about a person. He was really good about taking it all in, taking in all the nonverbal clues people give you to.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've never been a purely linear thinker. You can see to my rhymes, my mind is always jumping around, restless, making connections, mixing and matching ideas rather than marching in a straight line, purely linear thinking will rarely get you from the projects to being a billionaire. It's obviously a good idea. My mind is always jumping around, restless, making connections, mixing and matching ideas rather than marching in a straight line. It's exactly what I'm trying to do with founders. I'm trying to connect disparate thoughts. I've always believed in motion and action and following connections wherever they take me and not getting too entrenched. My life has been more poetry than prose, more about unpredictable leaps and links than simply steady movement, or worse stagnation. It has allowed me to stay open, essentially saying the value of flexibility is what he's talking about here. It's allowed me to stay open to the next thing without feeling held back by a preconceived notion of what I'm supposed to be doing next.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So later on, he says something that's just a fantastic line, a fantastic point. He talks about later on he becomes like a business partner in this restaurant with like Bono and Bill Clinton. And he's like, I didn't really like the laws Bill Clinton passed. He was detrimental to people that look like me and everything else. But he talks about meeting them and becoming friends with them. And he says, but I'm not exactly, and this is his great point, but I'm not exactly the same person I was in 1992 either. Everyone needs a chance to evolve. Two great ideas on this page a little later on. When you step outside of school and you have to”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doesn't mean he's like, he's respectful to me. He learns a lot from me just like I learned from, and he says in the interviews, like, you know, I'm studying Rakim. Big Daddy Came, but I'm also competing with them. He's like, you respect the people that came for you, but you're competing with them. You're supposed to. I know for a fact J. Cole thinks his album is better than mine. He's supposed to. You're supposed to feel that way. That is not something that people that don't have founder mentality have can't wrap their mind around”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He winds up signing this rapper, who's one of my favorite rappers of the new school rappers named J. Cole. And there was an interview Jay-Z was doing to promote his album. I think this was back in like 2013, 2014. He was releasing Magna Carta Holy Grail, that album. And he talked about the fact that him and Jay Cole have albums coming out at the same time. And he talks about the mentality that you should have. And he says, I know for a fact J. Cole thinks his album is better than mine. And the next line is the sponge line. And he's supposed to. He is supposed to feel that way.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To have these little reminders set around their house. Same reason I leave the book, The Tower of Charlie Munger out, The Bed of Hercusties, autobiography of a restless mind. These are just like little books I leave and place in my house. So I just pick up. They're books of maxims and aphorisms. It's not to sit there and read for 15 minutes, pick one up for two minutes, read an aphorism, a maxim, turn to a random page, and it's going to prompt your thinking, right? It's going to remind you of things just like JC's sitting in his big, beautiful house looking at this boscap painting and he's saying most kings get their heads cut off. This is what Jay-Z says. I read it as a statement about what happens when you achieve a certain position. People want to take your head, your crown, your title. They want to emasculate you. And you resist it.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reason I collect maxims and song lyrics and short form videos. I read, so he's talking about looking at that, walking in the corner in his house and seeing that painting on the wall. Most kings get their heads cut off. It's the reason why I have Ernest Shackleton on my lock screen on my phone. Why? Because I see Ernest cover. I see Shackleton covered in snow looking like death. And I immediately reminded of his motto by endurance we conquer. So when I look at my phone, I see, oh, you're going to give up, David? You're really going to do that. No, you're not going to conquer anything. Buy endurance. Get used to taking pain. And then when you open my phone, it's a line, a screenshot from the last dance, the biography of Michael Jordan. A guy that was totally focused on one thing and one thing only. So we see this is very common for people.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you actually get the things you would die for. One Basquiat painting I own is called Charles I. It's about Charlie Parker, the jazz pioneer who died young of a heroin overdose, just like Basquiat. In the corner of the paintings are the words most kings get their head cut off. So why is he telling us this? Why is he bringing up? Is he just bragging about that he's got really expensive art on his walls? No. This is the important part.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, they've given us a drive, they've made us stronger. Through hip hop, we found a way to redeem these lessons and to use them to change the world. So this is just fantastic too. The norm I lift myself on this page is this is just great. It's a million dollars worth of game for $9.99. That is a line he said in his album 444. What he means is like you're buying an album for 10 bucks and you're going to get a million dollars worth of ideas for it. Very similar to what they said in poor Charlie's almanac, founder's number 90 if you haven't listened to that, where it said there's 30, the reason that all like when you study The best founders and the best investors, like they all have deep historical knowledge. And the reason is there's a line in poor Charlie's Almanac. They said there's 30, there's a ideas worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book. And so this is just fantastic. So he's going to analyze the career and life of John Michelle Boschiat, who, if you listen to JC Music, you know who he is because he won't shut up about him. And he's just talking about, he's analyzing his work, taking the good ideas, right? And then avoiding the bad.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He says, I don't scrap with every up and comer these days. I got so many people coming at me, I'd never do anything else. I'm not competing with rappers anymore. I look at things a little differently than I used to. The competition isn't always zero-sum like it was when we were on the streets. I discovered that there really is such a thing as a win-win situation. So it's no point. It's like, this is all zero. This is not a zero-sum game. You can like my music. You can like that person's music. You can like that woman's music. And like, it goes on forever. So it says, I discovered there really is such a thing as a win-win situation. I'm only competing with myself to be a better artist and businessman, to be a better person with a broader vision. This is genius. This is exactly what we should be doing. I'm only competing with myself to be a better artist and businessman, to be a better person with a broader vision. I'm still that dude on the corner and he talks about the mindset he has. I'm still that dude on the corner seven nights straight trying to get back the money I lost. I'm still the kid who'd fight to be able to walk through a park. I'm still the MC who'd battle anyone in a project courtyard. So he's not saying this literally. He's saying I still have that mindset. This is what the streets have done for us.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's still, you know, people still fight over this stuff today. When I was younger, I really liked it. I thought the art form was very interesting. And as I get older, I'm like, this is kind of dumb. If I'm making music and somebody else is making music and somebody's, that other person's making music says something bad about my music, like the best thing for me to do is to ignore and outperform, right? Instead of me giving them attention. Now, some of this is like all fake and they do it's like, you know, wrestling thing where it's like if we have this fake beef, we'll sell more records and stuff. But I think in general, it's like, I don't care what other people are I'm just focused on me and my product and getting the word out. Like I just think that's smarter. And so that's what he's realizing here. He's like, I'm not going to freaking argue with every single person that comes at me. I don't have that much time.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anybody buys anything not to just own a product, but to become part of the story Although, so he picks up on something about change in his outlook on things in life that he becomes older and wiser and just learns more. One thing was interesting is like, you know, you have all these wrapp beef.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so what he realizes is like, forget endorsing other people's products. I'm not doing that. I'm making my own. If you'll buy a t-shirt you see me in, the t-shirt should be owned by me. If you go to the club and order a drink like Christow or whatever else, because I rap about it, then I should just rap about, like I should own everything. It's like almost like a form of vertical integration. And so he talks about this. Like, forget Timberlin, forget Cravassier, forget Versace and all the other stuff. Like, we're going to make our own stuff. And he just got a great line. Like, what story are you telling about your product? And he says, we gave those brands a narrative, which is one of the reasons anyone buys anything to own not just a product, but to become part of a story. That line could have came directly at a Coco Chanel's mouth. She said the exact sentiment behind that line is exactly how she built her massive, massive empire around. It's why.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For their influence of sales, right? They go meet executives like, nah, get out of here. They looked at us like we were speaking foreign language. They offered us free clothes. But we wanted millions. We walked out of their office realizing that we had to do it ourselves.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You will be an unstoppable. He knew the culture's power was never shy about leveraging it to making sure that it was the people who creating the culture who got rich off it. That was the idea. Now this is, again, I'm still on the same page. So many gems on this page. And I'm reading you almost the whole page. It's amazing. The idea was at the heart of Rockaware. So this is a company that they're going to start. They wind up selling. So Jay-Z sold multiple companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. Rockaware he sold for 200 million. I forgot how much he sold his liquor company for. He's got a few liquor companies. He just sold title to Jack Dorsey at Square for like $400 million. So he just does this over and over again. The idea was at the heart of rocketware. I mean, that's how you wind up being able to live in $100 million house, right? The idea was at the heart of Rocketware, the clothing company we founded. In the late 90s, I was wearing a lot of clothes from this company called Iceberg. After a while, I'd look out into the audience at my concert and see hundreds of people rocking iceberg. The executives at iceberg looked at us like we were speaking a foreign language. So they wanted to do a partnership deal. They wanted to get paid.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who got rich off of it? So let's stop here. Let's flash back just like Jay Z said at the very beginning. I knew hip hop was new. I just knew one thing and I knew in my bones. I knew it was going to be bigger than it was. It's going to be bigger in the future than it is today before it dies. Well, the analogy here is Russell knew how valuable Russell was one of the first people that knew that the birth of the hip-hop industry was going to make billionaires. He knew it. He was one of the first people to profit off of it.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Becomes this mentor, and this causes a rift between Jane as co founders. So he says, I remember sitting across the table from him and LeR Cohen in disbelief that we were negotiating a seven-figure deal with the greatest label and rap history, but it was feeling a dilemma. I was looking at Russell and thinking, I want to be this dude, not his artist. Russell would become a valuable informal mentor for me. He knew that the key to success was believing in the quality of your own product enough to make people do business with you on your terms. He knew that great product was the ultimate advantage in competition, not how big your office building is or how deep your pockets are or who you know. In the end, it came down to having a great product and the hustle to move it. He knew the culture's power and was never shy about leveraging it and making sure that it was the people who were creating the culture.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When Dame Biggs and I, so Dame's Burke, I think is his last name, and Jay-Z were the three co-founders of Rockefeller Records before Jay-Z is going to wind up breaking off on his own later on. I first met Russell with Dame Biggs and I were negotiating for a label deal with Rockefeller after reasonable doubt dropped. So first out at this point in the story, he's already decided, hey, I'm not going to sell drugs anymore. I'm going to dedicate all my time and effort into making it at this. He says, making it at this rap shit is the way he puts it. So his first album comes out. Doesn't sell a lot, but it's like critically, it's like, wow, this guy's really good. So it says, I remember sitting across the table from him in Leor Cohen. This is Lear Cohen from later on in the story too, because Leo is really important to the story because he's one of Jay-Z's mentors and is also, again, Jay-Z, he's demonstrated, like, I'm going to find the smartest people that know more than I do and I'm learn everything I can from them, right? And so he does that with Leor. He becomes a met.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Def jam style filtered through different industries. The business idea, so he's still talking about all the lessons he learned before he met Russell. The business ideal for a whole generation went from growing up and wearing a suit every day to never growing up and wearing sneakers to the boardroom. I understood when Russell was on to. He discovered a way to work in the legit world, but to live the dream of the hustler. Independence, wealth, and success outside of the mainstream rules. That's more founder mentality, independence, wealth, and success outside of the mainstream's rules. This was a better story than just being a rapper, especially based on what I now knew about how rappers got jerked. And so we moved on to a different page. He's about to meet Russell and I just wrote so many gems that are on this page. So he says, I first met Russell.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was moving off the street and try to envision what winning looked like it was Russell Simmons going back to see what I mean how blows your mind or blew my mind how much of this book is Jay-Z just studying the great people that came before him Russell was a star, the one who created the whole model for the hip-hop mogul that many people like Andre Harrell, Puff Daddy, and even Shugna.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After the way EMI handled jazz, I buried my little rap dreams and I took it out on the block. He's all right, I'm not going to be a rapper. I'll go back to selling drugs. And then here's the problem a little while after. He's like, this can't be my life. This isn't how my life should be is a very powerful motivator. So it says, in that bitter cold, folded into the crevices of a project wall, hundreds of miles from home, I sold crack to addicts who were killing themselves. Collecting the wrinkled bills they got from God knows where, I stood there thinking, what the fuck am I doing? And so eventually he's going to be like, I got to give it a go. And he realizes, forget trying to get signed by a record label, right? Even though no one would sign him, which is hilarious because he sold what, 125 million records up until this point. No one wanted to sign him, so he had to make his own record label, which winds up being the best idea he ever had in his life or one of the best ideas he ever had in his life. But he goes back to studying the greats. And this is going to be, I mentioned Rick Rubin, one of the co-founders of FJM. This is the guy, Russell Simmons, who essentially like is the first rap mogul. So it says when”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will Smith, and we let them convince us that Hawaiian Sophie was going to make jazz blow. Unfortunately, it didn't read that way once the video came out. That single was nearly career suicide for jazz. He went from being courted at the highest level to not having EMI return his phone calls. The wildest shit about the whole thing was that the executives at EMI who had withdrawn support for jazz project were coming to me behind his back to holler at me on some solo shit. I thought to myself, this business sucks. There's no honor, no integrity. It was disgusting. And he talks about how devastating it is from the individual's perspective. Jazz's debut album, something that he had been dreaming about his whole life, did come out, but in the end, it was nothing more than a tax write-off for a giant corporation.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And even though I didn't go around talking about it, even to my closest friends, I believed I could make it as a rapper too. So he talks about the time in London. I was like a sponge. When I'd sit in on Jazz's recording sessions and meetings, I never gave my opinion about how his business was being run. I was new and I didn't necessarily know how things worked in the music business. I did notice that even though we were in London for more than a month, when the guys from EMI finished Jazz's album, it didn't sound that different than its demo. So, okay, wait a minute, we spent all this time and money over here. His album's the same. And besides, you gave him one new track. He says the only new track they gave him was Hawaiian Sophie. But the point, he's like, well, this doesn't seem right. So I'm noticing. I'm trusting my intuition saying, hey, something's off here. But the problem is they have the experience. Like, they're the record label. They had just made a successful album, Will Smith. Maybe they know something we don't. So it says, but we were looking at the plaques on their walls and thinking about the radio play they got.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jazz is a flat in London to work with Chuck, which is this new, I guess, successful producer. So go to London, we'll rent you an apartment and work with Chuck and record your debut. Jazz invited me along for the ride. Inside, I was doing backflips and shit. So Jay-Z's talking about, like, listen, I barely projects, I'd been to maybe Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, but I'd never been abroad. Like, this is insane.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Success, where I can actually pay my bills legitimately and not worry about getting killed or going to jail or whatever the case is, but Jay-Zeng is like, I don't ever, I never thought about that. He says in his raps, like, I never had a job. Like he never had a job in his entire life, other than one that he made for himself. So one of the people that he gets to know when he's still before he's in the music industry is this rapper named Jazz. And he learns something because Jazz gets signed. He's one of the first people he knows to get signed to a major record deal. And that's where he's like, wait a minute, this isn't what we see. Like they're not actually adding a lot of value. He says it's like the most crooked legal contract in history. So he says, I would link with jazz. We'd go back and forth to each other's houses and write rhymes for hours. We'd lock ourselves in a room with a pen and a pad. So again, he's telling us practice, practice, practice over and over again. Jazz got a record deal. EMI advanced him a ridiculous amount of money, nearly half a million dollars. That was huge back then. The label rented...”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I. We also know that there's a ton of people who fail and there's devastating consequences to that. And so he goes back to this. These kids, he sees the guy who gets rich and thinks, yep, that'll be me. He ignores the other stories going around. They're working because they think they're due for a miracle. The kid in McDonald's gets a check and that's it. I never even consider that as a possibility. When you've got a nation of hustlers working for a small handful of slots, you learn something that you never learn at McDonald's. If you got the heart and the brains, you can move up quickly. There's no way to quantify all of this on a spreadsheet, but it's the dream of being the exception. And he also clarified, he's like, listen, I'm not dissing you if you go to work at McDonald's because he says it's like it was very, there's like a level of courage to walk through the hood, the Marcy projects in your uniform and everybody else is saying, hey, go play basketball, go sell drugs, do all this other stuff. He's like, no, I'm taking a predictable path.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Compete with Tupac and Biggie. Competition pushes you to become your best self. Jordan said the same thing about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. That desire to compete and to win was the engine of everything we did. So then he flashbacks in his life. He's still thinking, okay, like I can sell drugs or like, can I make this hip-hop thing work? And I'm going to read my note to you first before I read this section because I think it informs what's happening here. And I wrote founder mentality, you know exactly what J means here. I wanted money and excitement and love the idea of cutting myself loose from the rules and low ceilings of the straight world. So he's like, I'm not going to get a job. The kid on the street is getting a shot at a dream. He sees the guy who gets rich and thinks, yep, that'll be me. He ignores the other stories going around, so for his purposes talking about death and jail, our purposes were thinking, yep, that person's built a successful company.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going back to the Jay-Z's parallel, his thoughts on lyrics and rhymes is very similar to my thoughting on books. He says great rap should have all kinds of unresolved layers that you don't necessarily figure out the first time you listen to it. Instead, it plants dissonance in your head. It leaves shit rattlingly around your head, and that won't make sense till the fifth or sixth time through. It challenges you. The problem isn't in rap or the rapper or the culture. The problem is that so many people don't even know how to listen to the music.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the evils, devils with an apostrophe. But there's just one line from here. And he says, nine to five is how you survive. I ain't trying to survive. I'm trying to live it to the limit and love it a lot. That's why I feel they're really entrepreneurial anthems. Nine to five is how you survive. I ain't trying to survive. I'm trying to live it to the limit and love it a lot. Entrepreneurs are chasing what Mark Andreessen says. Like you only experience two as an entrepreneur, you only experience two feelings. Euphoria and terror. We're not seeking equilibrium. If we wanted to seek equilibrium, we'd go get a job. We're not interested.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So then he talks about mentoring Memphis Bleak, which is like this young kid that lived in his projects as well. They do a song together, and I just want to pull out one line here because just one line made me think of so many other examples. And so Jay-Z in the song is playing the role of the older mentor to the younger person. And he says, hold up. Now listen to me. You let them other dudes get the name. Skip the faint. 10,000 or 100, so 10,000 or 100 G's, so 10,000 or $100,000. Keep your shit the same. And so that's the line. And then this is Jay-Z now writing many years after the fact what it means. And he says, this is a classic piece of OG advice, so original gangster, like the interpretation of that would be like somebody older and wiser than you. Okay, so they're slaying his OG. This is a classic piece of OG advice. It's amazing how few people actually stick to it. So the advice from Jay-Z is stay on your grind. That's the way he says it. If you go back.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it says jobs were still furious at Google. My first thought was fuck you, Steve said. But then I thought about it and I realized that everyone helped me when I was young. What is happening in the book where we're at? Big Daddy Kane is a star. No one knows who the hell Jay-Z is. He does not have to give him the time of day. Not only does he put him on songs. But then I thought about it and realized that everybody helped me when I was young from Bill Hewlett, founder of HP, to the guy down the block. So I called him back and said, sure. Larry came over, sat in Job's living room, and listened to his ideas on building great products and durable companies.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A game. Back to Jay-Z. Kane had just an incredible amount of showmanship. Even today, I use some of the ideas I picked up back then in my own shows. Let's go back to what Kobe just said, or I haven't said it yet, but what Kobe said. Everything that I do, I learn from the guys who came before me. Go back to Jay-Z before we go back to Kobe. I use some of the ideas I picked up back then on my own show. And he was generous too. Generous. Remember that word. He'd stop the show and bring me out when no one knew who the hell I was. If you watched the fantastic documentary The Last Dance, episode five, right before Kobe passed away, unfortunately, he was interviewed. And this is what Kobe said. When I came into the league, Michael provided a lot of guidance for me. I don't know why I'm getting so emotional. I had a question about shooting his turnaround shot. He gave me great detailed answers. And on top of that, he said, if you ever ever...”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The exact same the way Jay Z is talking about Big Daddy Big Daddy King is exactly, exactly the way Kobe Bryant used to speak about Michael Jordan. And so Kobe said, when I grew up watching Michael play, listen, this is, I have goosebumps right now. This is freaking crazy. When I grew up watching, when I grew up watching Michael play, my generation saw the highlights and the fancy stuff. But what I saw was his footwork. I saw the spacing. I saw the timing. I saw the fundamentals of the game. Is that not exactly what Jay-Z was just telling us? I got an invaluable education from watching him perform. I was watching his breath control, his wordplay, the way he stacked rhymes on one another. While you're watching the girls and the jewelry and the robes, just like Kobe's generation was watching the highlights and the fancy stuff. Kobe's focus on the footwork, the spacing, the timing, the fundamentals.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And over again in my own life, you're now in a game where only time can tell. Survive the droughts, I wish you well. Survive the droughts, I wish you well. How sick am I? I wish you health. I wish you wheels. I wish you wealth. I wish you insight so you can see for yourself I double underline that last part. I wish you insight so you can see for yourself. And that is him telling us you have to do the work necessary to trust your own judgment. Companies live and die by the founder. No one is coming to save you. I wish you health. I wish you wheels. I wish you wealth. I wish you insight so you can see for yourself. Now let's go back to when Jay-Z was 19 and his informal mentorship, right, with Big Daddy Kane. And so he says it was 1988. I was still in the streets and I basically accepted that I'd be a hustler who happened to rap in his spare time. I thought the rap game was crooked and a little fake. Big Daddy Kane was playing a role.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A cop? No. Gotta connect? No. So, what he's saying there is that's obviously for drugs, but for our purposes, it's do you have something to sell? Do you have a way to get something to sell? You can sell it to somebody else's product, or are you going to make your own? So he's like, do you know where to cop? Do you know where to buy drugs? No. Do you got to connect the person selling drugs? No. And then he summarizes the very beginning of an entrepreneurial journey. Who in the F knows how to be successful? They say it's celestial. It's all in the stars. And then he says, and at all cost, you better avoid these bars. So in his game, it's like, listen, you better not, like, you need to avoid going to jail. Like where you go bust. You can't be successful if you don't first survive. So that's their example that you know what? I wrote down when I got to the line, he says at all costs you avoid these bars.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Goal. I'm not going to read. These are just the highlights I had, like the things I underlined it in the song lyrics. And then so he says, Mama, forgive me. I should be thinking about Harvard, but that's too far away. We're starving. And so even though everybody didn't grow up in the projects like Jay-Z, there's a lot of people that understand exactly what he's saying there. He's like, I should be thinking about Harvard, but that's too far away. We're starving. I remember when I was about to graduate high school, he's like, hey, where are you going to go to college? What do you mean? Where am I going to go to college? Whichever one I can drive to, whichever one I can work full time while I'm doing this. My parents didn't even graduate high school. So this idea where I should be aiming at Harvard, that's ridiculous. And then he goes on to the next thing. This is going to remind me about, okay, so he says, let me tell you to you first. Ain't nothing wrong with the aim. Just got to change the target. So to me, he's saying you have to pick picking the right market is essential. This is something Warren Buffett warns over and over again in his shareholder letters. This is something Mark Andreessen talks about over and over again in his blog.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talks about in the documentary The Power of Visualization of seeing things in your mind before you see them in person. This is something that we learned Este Lauder did. Bob Neus, the founder of Intel, did, Edwin Lan, the founder of Polaroid did, Steve Jobs did, Arnold Schwarzenegger. They all did this. Now, Jay-Z, I believe you can speak things into existence. And he says it starts from a dream. You're just sitting there daydreaming with your friends about future success. And so then he says, Seems as our plan to get a grant, then go off to college didn't pan or even out. He's like, no one goes to college from where I'm at in the hoods. So he's like, all right, so that's not going to work. What are we going to do? We need it now. We need a town. We need a place to pitch. We need a mount. And so that's the first time he's going to mention. You need a product to sell and you need a market to target. That's exactly what he's telling us here. This is what I mean. They're just entrepreneurial anthems disguised as rap songs. He says, mama, forget, I'm not going through every single...”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I'm going to go through this and try to make sense. I have connections I make here are so bizarre. Okay, so it starts first. I'm going to give you the line he says and then his interpretation of this. So it says, this is the shit you dream about with the homie steaming out back, back, backing them beamers out. So his interpretation of that line, this is Jay-Z talking. This is really where it begins in a room with your dudes too young to shave, dreaming about big body benzes you're going to push. Obviously for me, this is happening in Marcy, but this could be anywhere, a basement in the Midwest, a backyard in California, an oldsmobile somewhere down south. The danger is that it's all just talk. And then this is, I double underline this section. I believe you can speak things into existence. So another thing that surprised me, and it shouldn't surprise me by now, Jay-Z talks over and over. He probably mentions it at least three or four times in the book, on the power.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source