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

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“What happens after you create the album? He says the promotion was already starting, which isn't my favorite part of the process. I'm still a guarded person when I'm not in the booth or on stage or with my oldest friends, and I'm particularly wary of the media. And so he talks about it. So listen, man, if I don't know you, I'm going to be real quiet. But once I get to know you, I won't shut the hell up. I'm the exact same way. And that's another thing I appreciate that Jay-Z talks about knowledge music, but in the book a lot, it's like humans are multifaceted, man. We do things that we can't really explain. There's going to be actions that we're really proud of, actions that we don't like about ourselves. And you have to take the person as a whole. But there's just simply no such thing as a perfect human. Okay, so now we get to the first example of when he's breaking down his own lyrics. This is from the song American Dreaming. And it's really a story about entrepreneurship. I've mentioned Jay-Z a bunch of times on previous podcasts because I think, especially like his album 444, a lot of them, it's like entrepreneurship.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like you don't build an undifferentiated commoditized product. You have to differentiate. And so, in that documentary, Rick is telling something else. He's like, Jay-Z is very unique because he does everything in his head. He doesn't write it down. He waits to hear the track, and then he's got an idea, and you'll see him like, he calls it his Rain Man. He's like mumbling. Like, you can't really tell what he's saying, but his lips are moving. And so the reason I bring that up is because Jay-Z talks about it. He's like, I think of, I'm like a poet. That's the way I look at what I'm doing. And that's why I have to explain it to you, because a lot of people are listening to my music. They're not even understanding what I'm trying to say. And so this idea where it's like, wait a minute, like where Kim is the first person actually saw approach wrap like literature, like art. That's what I want to do. And then he says, and his song still banged at parties. Then he starts talking about what he learned from Icede, KRS1, Dr. Dre, all these other people over and over again. And so the way you think about what's happening right there in the book is like Jesus is doing exactly what Steve Jobs did, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so then he goes back. And again, this just blows my mind. Jay Z is studying the greats that came before him, which is exactly what you and I do every week on this podcast. There was no one like Rakim. His flow was complex, and his voice was ill. He was approaching rap like literature, like art which is exactly what JZ considers it. He's like, I write, but I don't write things down. So I don't know if you know this, but Jay-Z is famous because he starts writing things in his notebook when he's younger. But as he gets older and you can actually see this in, there's a documentary. It's called Fade to Black. It came out like 15 years ago. I had to rewatch it for prep for this podcast. And it's when Jay-Z thought he was going to retire. And it shows him building the album. And so he goes to California and he's working with this famous producer named Rick Rubin, who's one of the co-founders of Def Jam. And he's produced albums for everybody, not just hip-hop artists, but country people, rock. Everybody goes all over. They think Rick is just an amazing person.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You definitely are. You just don't know it. Kids like me were going through something strange and twisted, and we had a crazy story to tell. So through a friend of a friend, he winds up meeting one of his idols, which is this rapper called Big Daddy Kane. And at this point, remember, what I'm about to read to you, Jay-Z has no intention. He's like, I guess I'll just be a hustler. You know, that's what I'm going to do for my life. So he winds up meeting Kane. He's still rhyming. So Kane puts him on an songs. And that song is actually played on the radio. And he's like, this is crazy to me. And he says, people were talking about the second kid on the tape. That's him. The MC before Kane. I was getting great feedback. I couldn't believe people even noticed my verse. And he says he couldn't believe they could notice his verse because Big Daddy Kane was so, he had an audience. He had people that liked him. And people thought he was really, really good. And so Jay-Z gets on a track. He's like, wait a minute, I can hold my own with one of the best.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just insane how somebody that young could build something could make a classic album at such a young age and then Biggie's ready to die. Both came out before Jay-Z and that really helped him realize, hey, this is actually possible. And so that struggle of like straddling two worlds. Like, you know, there's stories in the book where he's been selling drugs in Virginia for three days and he's got to go and meet a record executive try to get a label. So he's got to drive back from Virginia overnight shows up all dirty, you know, smelling terribly terribly trying to convince this guy to sign him. And I guess I kind of just turned the page and kind of just ran over my own point that was trying to make it. He says it better than I could. I was still rhyming, but now it took a backseat to hustling. It was all moving so fast. It was hard to make sense of it or see the big picture. Kids like me think about that kids. He's a kid. Kids like me. And you don't feel that way. I remember being 16 or 17. You damn sure don't feel like a kid, but...”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was the person he used to buy what happened to the person he was buying drugs from. So like his supplier, like his wholesalers, you can think of like that. His name was DeeDee. When DeeDee was murdered, it was something out of a mob movie. They cut off his balls and stuffed them in his mouth and shot him in the back of the head execution style. And so that is the crazy, crazy environment that he's got to develop the skills to not only survive, but escape and then thrive throughout life. So the main theme of the book, because he spends a lot of time talking about, let's say his teenage years to his early 20s. He's selling drugs. He doesn't want to sell drugs, but he's not sure. He's like, if rap was actually a career, and he talks about the fact that people that were from similar projects like him, Biggie Smalls and Torres BIG grew up in a project in Brooklyn, Nas grew up in a project in Queens. And he says, once he saw them blow up with their initial, with their album, so Nas did El Matic when he was like 17 years old, which is crazy.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he says, But when crack landed in your hood, it was a total takeover. Sudden and complete. Most of these crack fiends were my parents' age are a little younger. They were skeletal and ashy, and they were as jittery as a rookie beat cops and their eyes were always spinning with schemes to get money for their next hit. Kids my age were serving them, meaning they were the ones, the kids were actually the ones selling the drugs to the older crackheads. Guys my age, and why were they doing that? Because guys my age fed up with watching their mom struggle on a single income. were paying utility bills with money from hustling, so that hustling is obviously talking about selling drugs. He says the courtyards of my projects, of Marcy projects and projects across the country contain teenagers who wore automatic weapons like they were sneakers. We had grandmothers who were afraid to leave their house. And he doesn't sugarcoat things for us. He's selling drugs at a very young age.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About what's happening. It's like a prompt for your thinking. And then here Jay-Z describes his early life when he's starting to do this in the crazy thing is. So he says, I was just a kid from public housing whose whole hood would rubber neck when an expensive car drove down the block. And what I wrote and I wrote this several times throughout the book when he says stuff like this, it's like a lot can happen in one lifetime. He goes from a kid living in public housing who is lusting after an expensive car to living in a hundred million dollar house in Bel Air. That happened. That actually happened. That is possible. And the great thing about reading autobiographies is the fact that this stuff is not sugarcoated. They talk in a way that they may not talk in like public interviews or if they're marketing new project or whatever the case is. So in this case, he's describing the environment that he grew up in. And this is the environment he had to survive. And he talks about the fact that he was a kid when the crack epidemic in the 1980s just exploded.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the way he did that for his own music, he's been doing that forever for the music of other people. It's very similar to how you and I are approaching these books where like it's not just a line. You look at it, we underline it. We try to tie to other things. We really think deeply about what the hell it means. And so in this case, this is the first example he's talking about, hey, I really looked up to people like Run DMC, the Sugar Hill game, Cool Mode D. And so he's going to talk about what he liked about Run DMC songs. And he says, he says their rhymes were crisp and aggressive. And he's talking about run of Run DMC. He says, run wrapped about having a big, long caddy, not like a Seville. And so he's quoting him. And then this is the important part. He says, that line seems like a throwaway. But to me, it felt meaningful. And the note I left myself on that page is like, I feel the same way. Like I'll be reading an entire paragraph, a page, and there's just something that jumps out at you. And you can't even really describe why it's so important, but they're not random lines. They have mean, if you sit down and pause and don't just skip to the next paragraph and think.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Idea. I never thought about that before. And so, what Jay-Z is picking up here, he's like, well, I'm in a brand new industry. They don't even really know what, they don't even know, like, some people are making a tiny bit of money over the case. He's like, but I have a gigantic opportunity. So not only can I practice my craft and get better over time, but I'm in this expanding market. And so it will lift me along with that. And he says, I'm not going to say that I thought I could get rich from rap, but I could clearly see that it was going to get bigger before it went away. way bigger. And then we're going to get into something that also blew my mind and it's silly that it should blow my mind at this point, right? Given everything you and I have talked about. But how much of this book is Jay-Z talking about studying the great people that came before him, breaking down their approach to their craft? So the book has chapters, but in between each chapter is Jay-Z's, so he's like handpicks some songs. And so he'll go through line by line.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he's like, all I have are my eyes and my words, right? So he says, I'd spend my free time reading the dictionary, building my vocabulary. It's the same idea. Remember that too, because there's a fantastic story where Jay-Z gets to have dinner with Michael Jordan later in the book. So I'll bring that up to you because it's just Fantastics. Two of my favorite people having dinner together. So then he's talking about this time. This is the late 70s, early 80s. And if you ever study Mark Andreessen, so back on founders number 50, I read Mark Andreessen's, I think it's like 200-page archive of his blog that used to be on, you can go back there in Founders number 50, you'll see the link to download the PDF for his blog. It's fantastic. It's absolutely free. There's no reason not to read it. It's really amazing. But Mark's advice for young people, he's like, listen, you should only be working in the industries where the founders of the industry are still in charge of their companies. I thought that was a really interesting.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exact same feeling. The feeling he's having as a 13 or 14 year old saying, Hey, maybe hip hop was away. I live in, you know, I'm not very happy with my surroundings. I live in the projects. My dad left. I'm being raised by a single mother. We don't have a lot of money. A few weeks ago or a few months ago, I read Steven Spielberg's Fantastic Biography. This is back on Founders 209 in case you haven't listened to that podcast. I would highly, highly recommend. Filmmakers, I'm working on another podcast for you on a biography of the filmmaker. Filmmakers are some of my favorite people to read about because I think the way they approach their craft, they're just so many parallels and ideas that we can steal as founders for our own work. But there's a line talks about why Steven Spielberg was obsessed by the time he was like 12 years old. He's like, yep, I'm going to be the director. He starts practicing Steven Spielberg at 12 years old, started practicing. He said he would envision himself going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar and thanking the Academy. He was 12 when he said that.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Newport, I'm going to pause there, go back to what Jay Z says. I would practice from the time I woke up in the morning until I went to sleep. Everywhere I went, I would write. If I was crossing a street with my friends and a rhyme came to me, I'd break out my binder and I'd spread it on a mailbox or a lamppost and I'd write the rhyme before I crossed the street. It is the exact same idea applied to two different domains, Sam Walton applied this idea to retail. Jay-Z applied it to being a rapper, to being, well, he considers himself an artist. a musician going back to Sam. But that store was totally an algorithm of everything we were doing since Newport. Another case of me being unable to leave well enough alone. Another experiment. And like most overnight successes, it was 20 years in the making. And so let's go back to Jay-Z's motivations to what I just read to you. I saw it as an opening, a way to recreate myself and reimagine my world. That is the...”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is 12 years before he creates his first album. He's 26 years old when he releases his first album, reasonable doubt. This is another example of that maxim that I've said on a few podcasts, that the public praises people for what they practice in private. The public praises people for what they practice in private. We didn't see, we saw us for Salam when he dropped it when he was 26 years old. We didn't see the 12 years before that of him practicing his craft before it was in public view. Recently, Netflix has this documentary. It's a fantastic documentary on Kanye West. It's called Genius. It's a three-part series. You can skip the third part, but the first two is all about the struggle, the founder mentality that Kanye had to possess to break into the music industry and to actually achieve his lifelong dream. And so just like we didn't see Jay-Z practicing for 12, 13, 14 years before he's actually in the music industry, Kanye says the same thing in...”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After I recorded a rhyme, it gave me an unbelievable rush to play it back, to hear that voice. Everywhere I went I'd write if I was crossing a street with my friends and a rhyme came to me I'd break out my binder, spread it on a mailbox or lamppost, and write the rhyme before I cross the street. Even back then, I thought I was the best. I'd spend my free time reading the dictionary, building my vocabulary. I could be ruthless, calm as fuck on the outside, but flooded with adrenaline. I wasn't even in high school yet, and I discovered my voice.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sidewalk, the benches are he'd going on the kids who were standing around listening to him and then he'd go in on how clean he was, how nice he was with the ball, how all the girls loved him. Then he'd start rhyming about the rhymes themselves, how good they were, how much better they were than yours, and how he was the best that ever did it. All he had were his eyes, taking in everything and the words inside him. I was dazzled. That's some cool shit was the first thing I thought. Then I could do that. That night, I started writing rhymes in my notebook. From the beginning, it was easy, a constant flow. For days, I filled page after page. Then I'd bang out a beat on the table. My bedroom window, whatever had a flat surface, and practice from the time I woke in the morning until I went to sleep. I saw it as an opening, a way to recreate myself and reimagine my world.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the 70s, and heroin was still heavy in the hood. Unpredictability was one of the things that we counted on, like the day when I wandered up to something I'd never seen before, a cipher. But I wouldn't have called it that. No one would have back then. I shouldered my way through the crowd towards the middle. It felt like gravity pulling me into that swirl of kids. No bullshit, like a planet being pulled into orbit by a star. His name was Slate, and he was a kid I used to see around the neighborhood. An older kid who had barely made an impression on me. In that circle, though, he was transformed, like the church ladies, touched by the spirit, and everyone was mesmerized. He was rhyming, throwing out couplet after couplet like he was in a trance. For a crazy long time, thirty minutes straight off the top of his head, never losing the beat, riding the hand claps. He rhymed about nothing.”
2024-02-25 · Founders · Jay Z's Autobiography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source