Shawn Corey Carter, a.k.a. Jay-Z, sat down with Vibe magazine for 15 questions, and the man dubbed by some as "the Best Rapper Alive" gave his take on his success and the future. Below is an exerpt from the interview.
Since "American Gangster" you’ve been on fire, jumping on remixes and doing freestyles. Have something to prove after the failure of "Kingdom Come"?
Jay-Z: My goal is to make a classic album this year, and my thing is to take a couple jump shots in my lay up line. I look at it like a sport, like basketball. And when I came out with "Kingdom Come," I didn’t do that. I came off the bench cold. It’s what I felt like doing at the time. So, once again, I don’t have regrets over it ... I still think it’s a great album. I just think, had I took a couple more jump shots, I could have made it to where everyone could have been able to relate to it.
Did American Gangster take your career back to where it needed to be?
Jay-Z: Oh yeah. I called it a reset button. I recently had a conversation with Timbaland about it for like five hours, and he was telling me it wasn’t needed. “Like you’re Jay-Z; you can do whatever.” That’s the beauty of rap: I’m not Jay-Z and can do whatever—it doesn’t work like that. With rap, it’s always about the next project, no matter who you are! It’s about what’s current, what’s happening right this second. ['Gangster'] set the foundation all over again, and it made everybody say, 'Whoa, hold up for a second.' It quelled those arguments [that Jay had fallen off ], and those arguments were not founded, but that’s just how it happens. That’s what keeps it fresh for me. I love that challenge. The day people just stop and say, 'He’s the greatest ... Oh just forget it; there’s never going to be anyone to touch him.' Once that’s everyone’s opinion, then that’s it for me.
Is that the Biggie and 2Pac factor? Are you chasing greatness?
Jay-Z: Chasing ghosts. The thing about that is no one expects you to be better than them. It’s almost blasphemous to say that, [but].... Even with their untimely and unfortunate deaths, they wouldn’t want it to stop at them. I’m supposed to want to strive to be the best in history. Period. Bar none. And that’s my goal. That’s how I really approach it. I mean it has to be that, right? There still has to be a yearning and a passion for what I do, to really further cement that mark. Every time I make an album, it’s going toward the legacy. It really ain’t about the sale of an album at this point, and a lot of people say that shit, and it’s almost cliché. Man I don’t care what it sells. For me, at this point, if I’ve developed a fan base, it’d be better than trying to get 10 million people. Because that’s how I actually started -- and it’s come full circle.
Read more in the pages of Vibe's September issue.
Spotted at: Vibe.com
And while we're at it ...
"Jockin' Jay-Z"
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