Across his five-plus decades on this earth, Jay-Z has adopted many descriptors. And, no, we’re not just talking about his given name, Shawn Carter.
There is Grammy winner (24 times over), president of Def Jam Recordings, founder of Roc Nation and billionaire, thanks to his stakes in companies like Armand de Brignac champagne, Tidal and Uber, his real estate and, of course, the publishing rights to his 14 No. 1 albums.
Not to mention father to 11-year-old Blue Ivy and 6-year-old twins Rumi and Sir—and, of course, Mr. Beyoncé Knowles, the power couple’s marriage now in its 16th year. And he came thisclose to becoming Sir Jay Z when Paul McCartney knighted him Sir Hova of Brooklyn (an honor King Charles III can officially only bestow on British citizens.)
And then there’s rapper, the one that started it all with the release of his debut, Reasonable Doubt more than 27 years ago. An album that required him to create his own label Roc-A-Fella Records to get it on the shelves, it charted on the Billboard 200, was certified multi-platinum, a milestone that’s pretty much standard for the 12 solo studio albums he’s produced since, and was eventually named as one of Rolling Stone‘s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
More than two-and-a-half decades since his coming out party, he’s no doubt succeeded even his loftiest expectations. “I want to represent hip-hop culture positively,” he surmised to Oprah Winfrey back in 2009. “No one in my family is wanting for a meal right now, so that part is done. Rap is what took me out of my situation, and now I must care for it. I have to leave it as I found it—or better—for the next generation of kids. Then maybe they can change their situation like I did.”
Beyonce.comMega-producer and frequent collaborator Swizz Beatz sees him as a “blueprint for our culture,” he previously told Forbes. “A guy that looks like us, sounds like us, loves us, made it to something that we always felt that was above us. If he’s a billionaire now, imagine what he’s about to be. Because he’s only just starting.”
The broad strokes of the Brooklyn native’s rags to unfathomable riches story are well-known and documented: Despite an aptitude for language, he never finished high school, making it as a drug dealer long before he began his journey to music legend by selling albums out of his car.
But there’s so much more enthralling history than can be covered in a soundbite. Which is what happens when you jam pack a lot of living into 50-plus years—nearly half of it taking place in the public eye.
In honor of the rapper-producer-record exec-entrepreneur’s 54th birthday Dec. 4, here are 50 truly fascinating tidbits from a life well lived.
1. Born in New York City’s Brooklyn, Shawn Corey Carter grew up in the notorious Marcy housing projects in the borough’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.
2. “It was a very intense and stressful situation,” he recalled during a 2010 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. “There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we’d play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day. It was a weird mix of emotions. One day, your best friend could be killed. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike.”
3. But he remembers some highlights. “My mom and pop had an extensive record collection,” he shared of his earliest inspirations, “so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.”
4. He was 9 when he “started messing with my parents’ record player,” he told British GQ in 2005. “I guess like all kids that got into hip-hop. And there was this guy who used to freestyle around the way. He used to rap about anything, You know, ‘My clothes is damp / And I like that lamp / And I am the champ,’ and I was like, that’s f–king cool. So I started trying it. It was a gift. I guess in the beginning I really took it for granted, it came so easy.”
5. When father Adnis Reeves split when Jay was roughly 10, his mom, Gloria Carter was left to raise him and his older siblings: brother Eric Carter and sisters Andrea Carter and Michelle Carter.
6. He told David Letterman during a 2018 appearance on his Netflix series, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, that, for years, he “had a bunch of anger towards him.” They later reunited at his mom’s urging.
7. The first meeting she set up, he was a no-show. “I was really done, but Mom pushed for another meeting, because she’s just a beautiful soul,” he recalled to Oprah Winfrey in 2009. At the next, “He showed up. And I gave him the real conversation. I told him how I felt the day he left. He was saying stuff like ‘Man, you knew where I was.’ I’m like, ‘I was a kid! Do you realize how wrong you were? It was your responsibility to see me.’ He finally accepted that.”
8. Reflecting back on the situation brought him some understanding. “His brother had gotten killed in the projects,” he explained to Letterman. “Someone would call him and say, ‘I’ve just seen the guy who killed your brother.’ He would get up from his bed with his children, take his gun and leave the house. At some point, my mother was like, ‘you have a family here.’ But she didn’t have the language she needed to say, ‘we love you, we don’t want to lose you as well.’ So her fear came out like an ultimatum to him….That splintered their relationship. From there he was in deep pain, started using heroin and things like that.”
9. After they reunited, Jay bought him an apartment and furniture, but he passed away months later.
10. At age 12, he shot Eric in the shoulder following an argument, an incident they were able to move on from. “We were able to get past it,” he told GQ. “He was able to get past his addiction and I was able to get past my stupidity. Now we’re a family.”
11. Crack was so prevalent in his neighborhood that he was recruited by a bodega owner to deal drugs in Trenton, New Jersey some 70 miles away. “No one survives that,” he noted to Letterman. “You were either going to jail or you were gonna get killed.”
12. He narrowly missed the former thanks to a trip to London to record with onetime mentor Jaz-O. “During that time, there was a secret indictment, and they swept up and grabbed 30 of my friends, everyone,” he continued. “One of my closest friends, he went to jail for 11 years.”
13. In a way, he escaped death as well. “Like everyone else,” he told GQ, he carried a gun. “But I never used it. Never. Ever.” He was, however, shot at “from very close range,” at one point: “A friend of mine, we had a misunderstanding. And at the time, all misunderstandings ended with someone getting shot. Luckily, I’m still here.”
