Jay-Z

I'm especially 

Joe Pesci 

With a grin
I will kill you, commit suicide,

And kill you again

From "Threat," a track on his The Black Album, which was released in 2003.

Joe Pesci is known for playing psychopathic criminals in Martin Scorsese movies like Goodfellas and Casino.  Like Pesci's character, the singer of this song is a real bad-ass -- if you cross him, he will kill you and then commit suicide so he can track you down in hell and kill you again. 

Gloria Carter

Shawn Carter was born December 4th

Weighing in at 10 pounds, 8 ounces
He was the last of my 4 children
The only one who didn't give me any pain when I gave birth to him
And that's how I knew that he was a special child

You may have noticed that "Rap Friday" was on hiatus in November.  But it's back for December -- the birth month of Shawn Carter, a/k/a Jay-Z.

The introduction to "December 4" (Jay-Z's birthday) is spoken by his mother, Gloria Carter.  According to her, she knew Jay-Z was special the day he was born, and Jay-Z would certainly second that emotion.

Jay-Z has an enormous ego.  (Only someone with a huge ego would begin a track with his mother telling the world how special he is because he caused her no pain during childbirth.)  That annoys a lot of people.  But Jay-Z just wouldn't be Jay-Z without his breathtaking swagger.

Jay-Z

I ball for real, y'all n*ggas is Sam Bowie

And with the third pick, I made the earth sick

M.J., him Jay, fadeaway perfect

From "Hola' Hovito," which was the 7th track on his 6th studio album, The Blueprint (which just happened to have been released on September 11, 2001).

The first pick of the 1984 NBA draft was Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon, who appeared in 12 All-Star games and was the NBA MVP for the 1993-94 season.  

The second pick was Sam Bowie, who made the all-rookie team, but played in only 63 games over the next four seasons.  (He had five leg surgeries during his career.)

The Bowie pick looked really bad because the third pick that year was Michael Jordan, a six-time NBA MVP who has the best career points-per-game average (30.1)  in NBA history.  (As Jay-Z notes, his fadeaway jumper was pretty perfect.)

On this date in 1984, Michael Jordan played his first NBA game.  His Chicago Bulls beat the Washington Bullets, 109-93.  

Jay-Z

[Rap] is built around two kinds of rhythm.  The first kind of rhythm is the meter.  In poetry, the meter is abstract, but in rap, the meter is something you literally hear: it's the beat.  The beat in a song never stops, it never varies. . . . It's like time itself, ticking off relentlessly . . . .

But the beat is only one half of a rap song's rhythm.  The other is the flow.  When a rapper jumps on a beat, he adds his own rhythm.  Sometimes you stay in the pocket of the beat and just let the rhymes land on the square so that the beat and the flow become one.  But sometimes the flow chops up the beat, breaks the beat into smaller units, forces in multiple syllables and repeated sounds and internal rhymes . . . . The flow isn't like time, it's like life.

Another excerpt from his 2010 book, Decoded.

Jay-Z

I lost people I loved, was betrayed by the people I trusted; felt the breeze of bullets flying over my head.  I saw crack addiction destroy families -- it almost destroyed mine -- but I sold it, too.  I stood on cold corners far from home in the middle of the night serving crack fiends and then balled ridiculously in Vegas; I went dead broke and got hood rich on those streets.  I hated it.  I was addicted to it.  It nearly killed me.  But no matter what, it is the place where I learned not just who I was, but who we were, who all of us are.  It was the site of my moral education, as strange as that may sound.  It's my core story and . . . that core story is the one that I have to tell.

From his 2010 book, Decoded, which is part autobiography and part a collection of  annotated Jay-Z lyrics.

Jay-Z

It gets dangerous, 

Money and power is changing us

And now we're lethal

Infected with D'Evils . . .

My soul is possessed by D'Evils 

In the form of diamonds and Lexuses . . .

I can't be held accountable, 

D'Evils beating me down, boo

Got me runnin' with guys, makin' G's, 

Tellin' lies that sound true

Come test me, I never cower

For the love of money, son, 

I'm givin' lead showers

Stop screamin', 

You know the demon said it's best to die

And even if Jehovah witness, 

Bet he'll never testify, D'Evils . . .

From his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, which was released on this date in 1996.  The title of this song, "D'Evils," is spelled like "devils" but is pronounced "de evils" (like "the evils") when he sings it -- but it's really the same thing, isn't it?   I know that it's not "Rap Friday," but Jay-Z is too good to limit to one day of the week.  Our next couple of posts will sample his recently published autobiography, Decoded -- a much more interesting and intelligent book that I was expecting.

Jay-Z

Can't you tell that I came from the dope game?

Blame Reagan for making me into a monster

Blame Oliver North and Iran-Contra

I ran contraband that they sponsored

Before this rhyming stuff we was in concert

(From "Blue Magic," the first single off his 2007 American Gangster album.  The stuff about Oliver North and Iran-Contra is a reference to the fact that the CIA admitted many years later that it had turned a blind eye to Contra supporters "who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking" -- and that's why Jay-Z says he ended up as a teenaged crack dealer.  "Iran-Contra" and "I ran contra-[band]" are homonyms -- words that have the same sound and same spelling, but different meanings.  Jay-Z's use of "in concert" to mean "working together" instead of its expected meaning -- a live musical performance -- is another example of his skill as a wordsmith.)