Empire State of Mind

by Zack O'Malley Greenburg

  Though a boon to his progeny, the deal was almost guaranteed to deal a fatal blow to Jay-Z’s relationship with Roc-A-Fella cofounders Damon Dash and Kareem Burke. As president of Def Jam, which had purchased the trio’s remaining stake in Roc-A-Fella for $10 million earlier in 2004, Jay-Z would become the de facto boss of his former partners. Their relationship was already strained, thanks in part to Dash’s impetuousness and Jay-Z’s growing desire to be seen as a legitimate businessman in his own right. In the waning days of 2004, Jay-Z invited Dash to dinner and informed him of his decision to accept Def Jam’s offer. Not one to waste an opportunity to deliver a mafioso punchline, he told Dash that the decision was “just business.”17

  At best, Jay-Z’s move was simply an example of someone accepting an enticing business offer. At worst, it was a corporate end-around on Dash. So, in what he called a gesture of goodwill, Jay-Z offered Dash and Burke full control of the Roc-A-Fella name in exchange for exclusive rights to the masters of Reasonable Doubt, which the trio co-owned. In Jay-Z’s mind, Dash and Burke owned Boardwalk, and he was trying to give them Park Place for Marvin Gardens, but his offer was rejected. “I was like, let me try to figure out some way where everyone can be happy . . . let me get Reasonable Doubt and I’ll give up [Roc-A-Fella],” Jay-Z said in 2005. “I thought it was more than fair . . . And when that was turned down, I had to make a choice. I’ll leave that for the people to say what choice they would’ve made.”18

  Within weeks, Dash bolted Roc-A-Fella to start his own Universal imprint, Damon Dash Music Group. Under this agreement, he wouldn’t have had to report to Jay-Z. But the deal fell apart amid reports that Dash had angered executives by constantly campaigning for a higher post within Universal.19 In a separate deal, Jay-Z bought Dash’s stake in Rocawear for $22 million,20 severing the pair’s remaining business ties. When the two encountered each other in an elevator shortly thereafter, the awkwardness was palpable. “If I were ever to write a movie, this would have to be either the end of it or the serious point when you know things have changed,” Dash explained. “He had on a suit with shoes and a trench coat. And I had on my State Property [shirt] and my hat to the side. And it was like we were two different people. It was ill. Our conversation was brief, wasn’t no malice, but we honestly were two different people. He was not the same person I had met. I would never expect him to wear a trench coat and shoes. It can just show that people can go in two totally separate directions.”21

  For Jay-Z, the split was partially a matter of efficiency. As the pair drifted apart in the years leading up to 2004, Jay-Z had identified a more effective right-hand man: his former accountant John Meneilly. “John is an incredibly smart guy. So is Damon,” Jay-Z explained to XXL in 2009. “Dame is good at starting something. I don’t know if he gets in his own way at a certain point. You know, the fights you had coming up aren’t the same fights when you’re on a different level. What would happen is, a lot of times, I would have to go fix. You know, it was time-consuming, going back and just doing three meetings, when we could have had one. Nothing got accomplished because everyone was screaming at each other.”22

  Though it may well have been warranted, Jay-Z’s repudiation of Dash was yet another example of a common trend between Jay-Z and his erstwhile mentors and business partners. Just as he honed his lyrical skills with Jaz-O’s help as a teenager in Brooklyn and developed his hustler’s sense selling crack with DeHaven Irby in Trenton, he learned legitimate entrepreneurialism from Damon Dash. In each case, Jay-Z absorbed the best qualities of his mentor, applied his own considerable talents to the subject at hand, quickly surpassed his mentor, and moved “on to the next one,” fittingly the title of a song on his 2009 album, The Blueprint 3.

  Unlike his very public separation from Dash, Jay-Z’s disengagement from both Irby and Jaz-O received little attention from the mainstream media. Irby’s disappearance from Jay-Z’s life was hastened by the former’s frequent jail stints; Irby claims that Jay-Z started trying to avoid him in the late 1990s.23 Jaz-O stayed in Jay-Z’s life longer than Irby, serving as a producer on Reasonable Doubt and remaining on good terms until 2002, when his relationship soured while recording a song with Jay-Z. “I asked him for like a verse and a half,” says Jaz-O. “He was like, ‘Nah, that’s too much.’ ”24 The elder rapper then took offense at comments made by Jay-Z’s sidekick Memphis Bleek, assuming that Jay-Z had authorized them; Jay-Z and Jaz-O have been trading lyrical barbs ever since. One-liners from Jay-Z include “I’ma let karma catch up to Jaz-O”25 and “nobody paid Jaz’s wack ass,”26 a snipe at his mentor’s financial success as a rapper. Jaz-O released a slew of songs including the venomous “Ova,” a play on both the word over and Jay-Z’s Hova nickname. The track featured a few personal shots: “Your problems ain’t ova, you’re damaged, pa / I couldn’t shoot my brother unless he was beatin’ on ma / You’s a fake friend, ova, my patience is ova.”27

  Jaz-O’s complaints about Jay-Z are even more specific in conversation than they are in song. “When you start making money, you start loving the lifestyle, and in turn you start loving the money,” he says. “Some people have the wherewithal to put things in proper perspective, and some people become maniacal. I think in his case, to an extent, he became maniacal. He loves money. Truth be told, he’s been willing to step on or step over anyone in his way whether they be friends, family, both, or neither, to acquire more.”28

  In the mind of DJ Clark Kent, however, the split between Jay-Z and his various mentors was simply the result of people growing in different directions. “When you meet somebody at age eighteen or nineteen, at twenty or twenty-five,” he says, “twelve to fifteen years later, you’re not the same people. So the people that they were just became too different to coexist. They were in different places. I think that’s all that happened.”29

  As Jay-Z was unwinding relationships with former associates and preparing to transition from a career focused on music to a career focused on business, he found himself confronting someone he thought he’d never see again. In 2003, before the release of The Black Album, Jay-Z’s mother discovered that his father, Adnis Reeves, was terminally ill. Despite the circumstances, Jay-Z was reluctant to come face-to-face with Reeves, but his mother arranged a meeting anyway. Reeves didn’t show up. Undaunted, Jay-Z’s mother organized a second meeting, and this time her son was finally able to confront the man who’d abandoned him as a boy nearly twenty-five years earlier.

  “Me and my pop got to talk,” Jay-Z told Rolling Stone in 2005. “That was very defining of my life. I got to let it go. I got to tell him everything I wanted to say. I just said what I felt. It wasn’t yelling and crying and drastic and dramatic. It was very adult and grown men, but it was tough. I didn’t let him off the hook. I was real tough with him. We just went through that whole thing. How could you do that? He was like, ‘Well, you knew where I was. I was like, ‘I’m a kid. I’m not supposed to find you. What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘You’re right.’ And then it was cool and that kinda freed everything.”30

  Jay-Z never revealed what precisely was freed by his paternal reconciliation, but clearly the interaction was monumental. When Jay-Z’s father passed away a few months later, the rapper had already pardoned him in his own mind. “So, pop, I forgive you for all the shit that I lived through,” he raps on “Moment of Clarity,” a track on The Black Album. “It wasn’t all your fault, homie, you got caught into the same game I fought . . . I’m just glad we got to see each other, talk, and remeet each other / Save a place in heaven ’til the next time we meet, forever.”31

  In the wake of his father’s death and the closure brought by reconciliation, Jay-Z seemed to let down his guard, at least to a few of the people closest to him. Though the outward aloofness and aura of invincibility that he’d cultivated throughout his early career were still there, it’s worth noting that Jay-Z’s relationship with Beyoncé didn’t begin to flourish until after he made amends with his father in 2003. Similarly, in the wake of the reunion
, he stopped jettisoning mentors. Those who guided him through the middle of his career—Cohen, Meneilly, and marketing guru Steve Stoute, for example—were spared the fate of Jaz-O and Damon Dash.

  He has also remained loyal to his protégés—including Memphis Bleek, who isn’t the world’s most gifted rapper but is a close friend of Jay-Z, and Kanye West, an unquestionably brilliant artist whose antics have nevertheless managed to alienate many supporters (Jay-Z even stood behind him during the Taylor Swift fiasco while millions were calling for Kanye’s head). Perhaps reuniting with his father inspired Jay-Z to take on a paternal role in these relationships.

  Whatever peace of mind the reunion brought Jay-Z, it couldn’t possibly have prepared him for the next step in his career—running Def Jam—a task that proved to be much tougher than he’d anticipated.

  6

  Def Jam Takeover

  If Jay-Z had 99 Problems in 2003, the quantity of his concerns must have swelled to triple digits when he took the helm at Def Jam on January 3, 2005. Prior to his arrival, the label had lost a litany of talent—Brooklyn-based rap group the Beastie Boys and Def Jam cofounder Rick Rubin left in the late 1980s, while seminal hip-hop squad Public Enemy and cofounder Russell Simmons departed in the late 1990s. (Simmons sold his remaining 40 percent stake in Def Jam for $100 million in 1999, a number no doubt boosted by the success of the Brooklyn-born rapper on the cover of this book.)1

  Jay-Z inherited the difficult task of revitalizing the legendary label in an era of sagging record sales and shrinking budgets. Like much of the industry, Def Jam’s payroll was stacked with relics of the 1980s. “The culture there has been institutionalized,” Jay-Z told Rolling Stone in 2010. “You had record executives there who’ve been sitting in their office for twenty years because of one act. ‘But that’s the guy who signed Mötley Crüe!’ Seriously? That was twenty-five years ago.”2

  Demoralized by what he found at Def Jam, Jay-Z came close to breaking his “I will not lose, ever” vow early in his tenure as president. “I wanted to quit right away,” he said in 2005. “There was nothing fresh, there was no excitement, it was just doing the same shit over again. I said, ‘Where’s the passion? Where’s the ideas? Where’s the new shit?’ I’m used to being around entrepreneurs and we was passionate about everything. But whether this artist comes out and [sells] four hundred million or forty thousand [albums] the first week, [the average employee’s] check is the same. So you’re doing everything routine, routine, routine, and you lose the passion for it. You stop coming up with new ideas, and you start erasing the name off the marketing plan and fill it in with another name and it’s the same shit.”3

  Jay-Z revved up his employees by calling for a two-day retreat at Manhattan’s Tribeca Grand Hotel. He gave a speech, then played a tape of Def Jam’s 1984 sales pitch to give his workers a reminder of the label’s fiery, independent roots. Then he went around the room and asked staffers to share their reasons for getting into the record business in the first place. “We got people to go back to that inner kid and the joy of being in the record business,” he said. “I wanted them to be alive again.”4

  His focus on making his employees feel good about their jobs wasn’t limited to theatrics at posh hotels. Though Jay-Z’s lyrical boasts could make Donald Trump cringe—there’s a line where Jay-Z calls himself “God MC”—he proved to be a humble and introspective boss. In a spoken word interlude to one of Jay-Z’s songs, his Brooklyn buddy Biggie says, “The key to staying on top of things is to treat everything like it’s your first project, know what I’m saying? Like it’s your first day like when you was an intern . . . stay humble.”5 Many who worked with Jay-Z at Def Jam say he embodied that philosophy, from the label’s top artists all the way down to interns like Nick Simmons, an aspiring entertainment executive who worked at Def Jam in the summer between his sophomore and junior years of college. “Jay would walk by and say, ‘Hey, how ya doing,’ ” Simmons remembers. “Sometimes he’d come over to the intern booth just to say hi.”6

  Those who crossed paths with Jay-Z in the boardroom noticed a keen intellectual curiosity in the Def Jam president. “One of the things I like about the guy is that he wants to learn,” says Bernie Resnick, a Philadelphia-based entertainment lawyer. “He has a thirst for knowledge. And even when he was younger, he was always asking questions. If it was backstage or in a studio or a business meeting, he wasn’t afraid to say, ‘Hey, how does this work?’ Or, ‘What’s the structure of that kind of deal?’ He was always very curious about business deals. Which lends itself well to someone who would like to transition from being an artist to being a business impresario.”7

  Jay-Z’s new boss, Antonio “L.A.” Reid, wasn’t shy about heaping praise on his star employee. “Being around Jay is inspirational to people,” he gushed to Billboard in 2006. “I don’t care if you’re a forty-year-old executive or a twenty-year-old intern—having that kind of access to that kind of wisdom, stardom, experience, and level of charm could change your life.”8

  Though he proved to be more than capable as a schmoozer, Jay-Z’s main task as president was to beef up Def Jam’s sagging musical lineup. One of his first signings was Barbadian singer Rihanna. A multiplatinum Grammy winner today, she was a nervous seventeen-year-old when she auditioned at Def Jam’s New York offices in 2005. As soon as she sang “Pon de Replay,” which eventually became her first big hit, Jay-Z recognized her potential and signed her to a record deal the same night. “The audition definitely went well,” Rihanna recalled in 2007. “Jay-Z said, ‘There’s only two ways out. Out the door after you sign this deal, or through this window.’ And we were on the twenty-ninth floor. Very flattering.”9

  While Rihanna went about recording her debut album, Jay-Z encountered some setbacks—both personal and professional. Over the years, he’d grown close to his nephew, Colleek Luckie; when he nearly missed Luckie’s high school graduation in 2005 because of a cab snafu, Jay-Z made a rare show of emotion (“I was so mad,” he said. “I had tears in my eyes and shit. I don’t cry over nothing.”10) Though he made it to the ceremony, devastating news came weeks later: Luckie was killed in a car accident while sitting in the passenger seat of the Chrysler that Jay-Z had given him as a graduation present. When asked about the incident in 2005, Jay-Z was noticeably shaken. “It was the toughest shit,” he said. “Nothing close to it. Like I’m numb. I’m numb.”11 His nephew’s passing represented not only the loss of a bright young life, but perhaps also the interruption of Jay-Z’s attempts to deal with his own feelings of paternal abandonment by acting as a father figure to Luckie.

  Back at the office, Jay-Z kept his composure in spite of the additional adversity. Albums from Marcy chum Memphis Bleek and Philadelphia-based rap duo Young Gunz produced dreary sales numbers despite heavy shilling from Jay-Z himself. So he set about signing more acts to Def Jam. The Roots, one of hip-hop’s edgiest acts, were among the new additions. Their relationship with Jay-Z dated back to 2001, when the group agreed to work as Jay-Z’s backup band on the live album MTV Unplugged: Jay-Z.

  On a winter’s day too snowy for an in-person interview, the group’s drummer, Questlove, recalls that he was a bit skeptical when the Roots first hooked up with Jay-Z. Unlike the alternative Roots, Jay-Z—especially in the old days—was known for being an ultra-materialist with a penchant for rapping about guns and money. But Questlove soon discovered the man behind the image. “Jay constantly wanted to figure out how to better his situation,” he explains. “He would stay in rehearsal until very late. And he would ask a lot of questions. And he would show up on time . . . He’s the easiest artist I’ve ever worked with. He’s literally trying to better his art, which was surprisingly admirable to me. Because I just figured, ‘Oh, you’re the king of the hill, why would you even give a fuck about your art? Who cares about art when you’ve got money?’ ”12

  Impressed with Jay-Z’s inquisitive nature, the group turned to him when they started looking for a new home in 2005, picking Def Jam over oth
er labels and more lucrative terms. They felt lost in the shuffle at Jimmy Iovine’s Interscope Records and believed Jay-Z would be a much more attentive boss. Thanks to the tremendous respect Iovine had for Jay-Z, the Def Jam president was able to facilitate the Roots’ release from Interscope without wounding any egos. “I told Jay, ‘I wanna come to Def Jam,’ and he was like, ‘All right, cool,’ ” explains the ever-mellow Questlove. “So he asked Jimmy Iovine. And we wrote an e-mail . . . Like, ‘We just want to transfer to Def Jam, is that okay?’ And [Jimmy] said, ‘Hey, that was the most respectful release I’ve ever done.’ ”13

  Less than a year later, the Roots found themselves in a bind that required the sort of personal attention that drew them to Def Jam in the first place. This situation was so dicey and urgent that it seemed not even Jay-Z could fix it: on the eve of finalizing their latest album, the Roots discovered they needed legal approval to use a sample from a song by the rock band Radiohead. “We had exactly twenty-four hours to get an impossible clearance,” recalls Questlove. “We were pulling our hair out because this was like the emotional centerpiece of the album, and now we’re about to lose this because the lawyers are like, ‘No, we want $700,000.’ Which was unheard of.” So Questlove called Jay-Z and explained the situation. “ ‘Please tell me you know anybody in Radiohead,’ ” he remembers telling Jay-Z. “He’s like, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ I was like, ‘Fuck, we’re going to lose this song.’ Amazingly, while I’m at the gym an hour later, [Radiohead lead singer] Thom Yorke gives us a call, and you know, it was quite the opposite. They were really flattered that we considered it, and he approved it.”