JAY-Z

JAY-Z (born December 4, 1969, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) is an American rapper, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who became one of the most influential figures in hip-hop in the 1990s and early 21st century. A classic self-made music mogul, he parlayed his streetwise business skills and confident lyricism to become an icon on the East Coast hip-hop scene. By 2025 JAY-Z had racked up 25 Grammy Awards, which at the time was the most won by any rap artist. He is equally known for his involvement in social justice ventures and his marriage to fellow superstar Beyoncé, with whom he has often collaborated on music projects.

From Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects to Roc-A-Fella Records

Shawn Carter grew up in Brooklyn’s often dangerous Marcy Projects, where he was raised mainly by his mother, Gloria Carter, who at times worked two jobs to make ends meet. He began selling crack cocaine as a teenager. In 2010 he reflected on this experience in an interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross: “At 14, 15 years old, you’re thinking about sneakers or you’re thinking about some sort of relief from all of the pain you’re feeling. You’re thinking about buying some food for the house. You’re thinking about paying the extra light bill. So at that young age, you’re not thinking about the destruction you’re causing your own community.”

About that time Carter began writing rhymes. His songwriting influences ranged from old-school hip-hop such as Run-DMC to movies. (Jay-Z has said that the elliptical narrative in his 2002 song “Meet the Parents” was inspired by the fractured storytelling in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction.) Carter’s firsthand experience with illicit drug dealing would inform his lyrics when he began rapping under the stage name Jazzy, soon shortened to Jay-Z (which may also have been derived from the proximity of the J and Z subway lines to the Marcy Projects). Jay-Z and two friends founded their own company, Roc-A-Fella Records, to release his debut album, Reasonable Doubt (1996), which eventually sold more than a million copies in the United States.

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Topping the charts and taking over Def Jam

A string of successful albums followed at a rate of at least one per year through 2003. Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life (1998) was not only the first of Jay-Z’s releases to top the Billboard 200 album chart, but it also won him his first Grammy Award, for best rap album. The critically acclaimed The Blueprint (2001), featuring the triumphant hit “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” solidified his status as one of the preeminent voices in hip-hop at the dawn of the 21st century. Shortly after its release, Jay-Z pleaded guilty to assault in connection with a 1999 nightclub stabbing and received three years’ probation, but the incident did little to derail his career.

Ahead of the release of The Black Album (2003), however, Jay-Z announced his retirement as a performer. (At the time, he remarked to The New York Times, “Hip-hop’s corny now.” Years later, however, he admitted that he had become “burned out” after nonstop recording and touring since 1996.) The ostensible farewell recording proved to be one of his most popular, with the brash single “99 Problems,” produced by Rick Rubin, attracting considerable attention. Some critics objected to the song’s use of the term bitch and called it misogynistic. Jay-Z told Fresh Air, “That was the writer in me being provocative, because that’s what rap music should be at times.…Everything has to be put in context. And when you put it in context, you realize that I wasn’t calling any female, besides a female dog, a bitch on this song.”

In 2004 Jay-Z assumed the presidency of Def Jam Recordings, making him one of the most highly placed African American executives in the recording industry at the time.

Postretirement collaborations, business ventures, and marriage to Beyoncé

Postretirement, Jay-Z stayed remarkably active in music. He collaborated with the rock group Linkin Park in 2004, and he appeared as a guest vocalist on the recordings of numerous other artists, including Kanye West, whose career he had helped foster, and Beyoncé, whom he had begun dating. Jay-Z also developed a large portfolio of business ventures and investments, including a film-production company, a clothing line, and a stake in the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association, which he later helped relocate to his hometown of Brooklyn.

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Jay-Z formally returned to solo recording in 2006 with Kingdom Come. In 2007, shortly after releasing the album American Gangster, he stepped down as Def Jam president. He founded a new label, Roc Nation, in 2008, and it soon became a full-service entertainment conglomerate. That year he married Beyoncé; they quickly became one of the entertainment industry’s most powerful couples. Their relationship was closely tracked by the media, and in time the two superstars would answer such intrusions with complementary bare-all recordings that helped change the direction of songwriting in hip-hop.

Jay-Z proved that he remained one of rap’s most-bankable acts when he embarked on a highly successful tour with Mary J. Blige in 2008. The following year he released The Blueprint 3, which bore the sound of some of his most frequent producers, including West and Timbaland. The album generated such hits as “Empire State of Mind,” a musical love letter to New York City adorned with soaring guest vocals by Alicia Keys, and the determined “Run This Town,” which featured West and Rihanna. Both songs won Grammy Awards, as did two other singles from the album. Watch the Throne (2011), an ambitious and highly regarded collaboration with West, proved to be similarly fruitful, with the singles “Otis,” “Niggas in Paris,” and “No Church in the Wild” capturing Grammys as well. In between the two releases, Jay-Z published a memoir, Decoded (2010).

Jay Z (having dropped the hyphen from his name) returned in 2013 with Magna Carta Holy Grail, which, in an exclusive deal with Samsung, was made available for free to users of the company’s smartphones several days ahead of its official release. Although the album, on which the rapper reflected on his massive wealth and fame, was greeted with mostly lukewarm reviews, it became his 13th release to land at number one on the Billboard 200. It also produced two Grammy wins: one for best rap/sung collaboration for “Holy Grail” and another for best music video for “Suit & Tie.” He received two more Grammys a year later for his collaboration on Beyoncé’s song “Drunk in Love.”

In 2017 JAY-Z (having capitalized the letters and reinstated the hyphen in his name) released his 13th studio solo album, 4:44, an extremely candid album that was, in part, a response to Beyoncé’s Lemonade (2016), on which she accused her husband of adultery. He admitted to infidelity on various tracks and also addressed racism and politics. In an interview with The New York Times he explained how the concept of their dual confessional albums originated: “We were using our art almost like a therapy session. And we started making music together.” The couple’s albums were both released exclusively on TIDAL—a subscription-based music streaming service that JAY-Z owned alongside other artists. JAY-Z had acquired the service in 2015 when he purchased its parent, the Norwegian technology company Aspiro AB.

In 2018 he and Beyoncé, billed as the Carters, unveiled the collaborative effort Everything Is Love, for which they won the Grammy for best urban contemporary album. Since 4:44 much of JAY-Z’s musical output has been collaborations with his wife or other artists. He has also contributed to many film soundtracks, such as the 2021 western The Harder They Fall, which he also produced and features a predominantly African American cast. Between 2021 and 2025 he racked up three more Grammys, bringing his total to 25 and breaking a record for the rapper with the most Grammy wins. (He and West had previously tied with 24 Grammys; in 2026 Kendrick Lamar surpassed JAY-Z’s record.)

JAY-Z secured his legacy as one of hip-hop’s greatest rappers with a star-studded three-night stand at New York’s Yankee Stadium in the summer of 2026. The first two shows were dedicated to celebrating the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt and the 25th anniversary of The Blueprint, respectively. During the third show he performed nearly 50 songs from his catalog and welcomed guest appearances by Beyoncé, Rihanna, Jeezy, Usher, Pharrell Williams, and others.

Later that year he won his third Emmy Award for producing Bad Bunny’s 2026 Super Bowl halftime show; he had previously earned Emmys for producing the 2022 and 2023 halftime shows under his conglomerate, Roc Nation. Next JAY-Z reunited with Rick Rubin for the HBO docuseries JAŸ-Z in 8, in which the two friends discuss the rapper’s catalog, song by song.

In 2027 JAY-Z will headline the Super Bowl halftime show, which will be produced by Roc Nation.

Philanthropy and social justice activism

Along with his business ventures, JAY-Z became heavily involved with philanthropic projects, many of which are tied to social justice efforts addressing racism, financial insecurity, and incarceration. In 2002 he founded the Shawn Carter Foundation with his mother; the organization provides college scholarships to students who have faced financial and socioeconomic barriers while pursuing a higher education. JAY-Z is also a cofounder of REFORM Alliance, which is dedicated to reforming the probation and parole system, and he serves on the advisory board of the United Justice Coalition, which works for changes in the criminal justice system.

JAY-Z has been especially vocal about bail reform, even penning an essay for Time magazine in 2017 on what he called “the injustice of the profitable bail bond industry.” He wrote, “If you’re from neighborhoods like the Brooklyn one I grew up in, if you’re unable to afford a private attorney, then you can be disappeared into our jail system simply because you can’t afford bail.” The essay appeared a few months after the premiere of TIME: The Kalief Browder Story, a documentary miniseries he produced to bring attention to the case of a Black teenager who died by suicide after three years of wrongful incarceration in New York City’s Rikers Island. In addition, in 2015 there were unconfirmed reports that JAY-Z and Beyoncé had anonymously donated thousands in bail money for protesters who were arrested in the wake of the police-related deaths of young Black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland.

Personal life and honors

JAY-Z and Beyoncé have three children. In 2012 they welcomed their first child, daughter Blue Ivy Carter. In 2017 the couple had twins: a son, Sir, and a daughter, Rumi.

Along with his Grammys and many other awards, in 2017 JAY-Z became the first rapper to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The following year the U.S. Library of Congress added The Blueprint to the National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” In 2021 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Four years later Reasonable Doubt was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame.

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