DISGRACELAND - Jay Z: Street hustle, a Nightclub Stabbing, a Near Drug Bust and the God MC

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

Jay Z’s career defies easy categorization. His artistry and business sense are as influenced by his past career as a drug dealer as they are anything else. Jay Z has reached unprecedented heights as an entertainer and an entrepreneur, and it almost never happened. All because of a stabbing. A stabbing that was influenced by that same street hustle that created “Jay Z."   To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. This episode was originally published on March 24, 2020. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok⁠ Check out Kikoff: ⁠https://getkikoff.com/DISGRACELAND  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway then Elizabeth Taylor. That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You,

the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is.

Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move, and he went out the front door

and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Jay-Z are insane. As a boy, he shot his own brother.

He himself was shot at, arrested for a drug possession, charged with the stabbing of a colleague. Raised in one of the most violent housing projects in the country, J.Z is imbued with a hustler's sense of the street. Yet he's dined with presidents, keeps Warren Buffett, one of the richest men on the planet on speed dial, and continues to lend his name and his considerable wealth to cause as he believes in, to help illuminate injustice. JZ is impossible to simply categorize. He is as multi-hyphenate as they come, rapper, producer, CEO, entrepreneur, activists. At his core, though, he will forever be simply a hustler, a hustler who has made and continues to make some of the greatest music of all time.

Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Hoboken Riddle, M.K. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to smooth by Santana and Rob Thomas. And why would I play you that specific slice of Latin-infused nowhere rock cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 1st, 1999, and that was the night Jay-Z entered Manhattan's Kit Kat Club and set off a melee resulting in a stabbing that very nearly derailed the career the most successful hip-hop artist of all time.

On this episode, a natural-born hustler, nowhere rocked cheese, the greatest flow in the game, a nightclub stabbing in the eighth wonder of the world, the motherfucking greatest, Jay-Z. So thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You could have been anywhere in the world tonight, but you're here with me. I appreciate that. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. is there are white people in the mother country that are for the same type of things that we are for

to eliminate revolution in the mother country. We said that we want to anybody who are in coalition with anybody that has revolution on that mind. Everything that we all right and everything we put back in the hands of people. The revolution is. December 4th, 1969, Chicago. Fred Hampton had his hustle on. As chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, he had to. It was his job. Hustle the Panthers' route. Hustle new recruits. Hustle the Revolution. Make every word count. Make every speech sting. America had it coming. Years of white American oppression had led to the formation of the Black Panther Party and outspoken, radical, sometimes violent organization that had felt the 1960s winds of change blowing through the cold Chicago air and decided that the Revolution would most certainly be televised, and fucking technicolor if they had anything to say about it.

Freedom. Full employment of their people. An end to the robbery of the black community by the white capitalists. By any means necessary. Brother Malcolm's hustle was spot on. Fred Hampton knew it. And Fred had his wrap down, too. Just like Malcolm X, Fred's flow was unique.

Unlike any others, Fred Hampton was a highly skilled. order. The Panthers Brass knew this, which is why at the tender age of 19, he had rapidly ascended the leadership ranks of the revolutionary organization. And it's also why Jay Edgar Hoover had designated Fred Hampton for the FBI's Agitator Index, marking him as a key militant figure by the time he'd turned 21, using the index to track and monitor Hampton's every move. He was followed by G-Men. His mother's phone was tapped, unseen forces. worked carefully to carry out a disinformation campaign to sow discord between the Panthers and like-minded revolutionaries. And most effectively, Jay Edgar Hoover managed to place a spy high into Fred

Hampton's inner circle. Fred's bodyguard was a snitch. William O'Neill, Rado Fucko, had his beef for felony car theft dropped by the FBI in exchange for mulling out Fred and his fellow Panthers to the Bureau on the regular, providing intel, information on Fred's wearabouts, the Black Panthers' plans, et cetera. For Hoover and his boys, it was a highly effective asset. They heard everything, they knew everything, and tonight they knew Fred Hampton was on his game, firing up the neighborhood rank and file at the Church of the Epiphany, spitting revolution to his own rhythm, sans beat, acapella, fire flow, irresistibly compelling. December 69, The twilight of American idealism, uncivil disobedience in the air.

But 800 miles away in Brooklyn, things were a bit more peaceful than they were back in Chicago on that night. At least in the hospital room, Gloria Carter was occupying. And this was her fourth child. He would come easy, she knew it. He'd be unaffected by the birthing chaos ringing out throughout the rest of the maternity ward floor. Baby screaming, bloody murder, mothers bearing unspeakable pain, expectant father, as those who'd managed to show up anyway, drunk on anticipation or worse. Chaos ruled everything around her, but not here in her room.

She had a feeling this one would be different. Right from the jump, he'd flow easy. December 4th, in the wee hours after Fred's epiphany wrap, 4 a.m., Chicago's west side, outside a poverty-blighted tenement building, a 14-man government-sanctioned special ops unit headed up by the Chicago State's attorney's office in lockstep with Mayor Daley's Chicago PD. It was time. No more fucking around. Just days ago, two cops were shot dead, seven others riddled with bullets and various shootouts with the Black Panthers, and the cops had an ungood authority from Hoover's inside man that

the apartment they were now posted up outside of on this freezing Chicago morning, Fred Hampton's apartment was stockpiled with 19 guns and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. The plan was well underway. William O'Neill, Hoover's snitch slash Fred Hampton's bodyguard, had slipped Fred a barbiturate after his speech at the Church of the Epiphany earlier that night, and the feds on his mom's wiretap literally heard Hampton pass out mid-sentence around 1 a.m. He was inside asleep. The revolution was put on pause,

and if the feds had anything to say about it, it would be quelled completely before sunrise. They crept up the front stairs. guns drawn, eight cops and assassin squad. Another six cops posted up behind the back door, a death trap. The stairs in the front hall could barely hold the approaching raiders. They spat out their own burden with every step, creaking and cracking with each creepy footfall. It was only a matter of time before the authorities were made,

and they were about to lose the element of surprise if they didn't act fast. 4.45 a.m., a cop at the front of the line kicked in Fred Hampton's door. The Panther Mark Clark was sitting in a chair on the other side of the door, a shotgun at his lap, security duty. The cop shot him instantly. Direct, straight to the chest. The impact of the shooting caused Mark's finger to pull the trigger, a reflexive death convulsion. His gun discharged into the ceiling post-mortem.

It came out of nowhere and it scared the fuck out of everyone. But for the raiders, it was a fortunate accident. Shots fired, ship was on. Bullets blasted out from the raiding team from me. inside the apartment. The rest of the cops barreled into the tiny flat. They had one mission. Find Fred Hampton. They kicked open the bedroom door. And there he was, dead asleep, drugged to the gills. His nine months pregnant fiancé had his side, shouting her pretty little face off. One cop grabbed her by the hair and dragged her screaming bloody murder out of the bedroom. Fred lay silent,

sleeping, drugged, oblivious. The cops in the room noticed blood on his shoulder. Somehow he caught a bullet from the initial melee, but he was alive and still asleep. Harold Bell, a fellow Black Panther, was in the other room, hands up, on his knees surrendering, his eyes and ears wide open, he heard one cop say to another. That's Fred Hampton. The reply, is he dead? Bring him out. He's barely alive. He'll make it. Bring him out. A rustling, something being dragged across wooden floorboards, and then Bell heard two shots. And the screaming stopped. There was silence.

One cop broke it saying, he's good and dead now. They dragged Fred Hampton's body into the bedroom doorway and left it lying in a pool of blood. Then the cops went hunting. They fired multiple shots into the second doorway, wounding four other panthers. They dragged their bloody beaten bodies down the stairs

out into the street and arrested them for assault and attempted murder of the police officers. Fred, Fred was dead. And sadly, for the purposes of the revolution, so was his hustle. Back in Brooklyn, Gloria Carter's newborn baby was very much alive. Despite weighing 10 pounds, 8 ounces, he flowed easily out of her birth canal. She named him Sean, Sean Carter. He'd one day take on many names, Jay, Jehovah as in Jehovah, as in the God MC because of his flow,

the CEO of the ROC because of his hustle and known the world over simply as Jay-Z. He was born on December 4, 1969, and he arrived on the day Fred Hampton died, because real hustlers just multiply. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened.

His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that really happened.

Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast.

Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got to. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra P and an E at the end.

So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies. we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was.

Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything. And me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.

And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the world, we were called hustlers. In the corporate world, they're called CEOs and businessman. I used to talk a lot. I was slick. I was slick.

I was slick. In the corporate world, they call that a master communication. Okay? So here were the parallels between the street hustler, the multi-million dollar drug dealers who never used drugs, who never was a part of gangs, who never carried guns. Age 19, millionaire. I was sick. And I embrace a criminal lifestyle. My criminal lifestyle was shaped by my mentors. I wanted more for my mother. I wanted more for my mother. I decided that this was the way for me, which was the meal ticket for 10. tens of thousands of young men of color in inner city communities across the number.

I was one of those guys. And it's not something that I'm proud of. But you always have to go back to the beginning of how it began. Slick, smooth, cunning. The hustler is all of these things. But he is also distrusting, insecure, and paranoid. And right now, in the year of 1994, this Marcy Housing Project's hustler was paranoid as fuck racing down the New Jersey Turnpike, the drug thoroughfare between his stash house in Brooklyn,

and the open markets he was conquering in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia. The Nissan Maximum wasn't the Lexus he wanted, but it did the trick. Reliable, inconspicuous, comfortable, and most important, it was mechanically tricked out with stealth hiding spots for his package. The secret compartment in the interior near the sunroof was the spot. A large stash of crack cocaine was inconspicuously hidden. Only he knew where it was. The cop who had stopped him a few minutes ago had no idea. But the German Shepherd from the canine unit most certainly would know

because the dog was an ace drug tracker. A female, the bitch, had a more balanced temperament than her male counterparts and was better inclined for meticulous drug tracking. The cop was waiting on the side of the road, impatient, the hustler in the driver's seat of his maxima, who was known on the street simply as shone and in wrapped battle circles as jazzy or increasingly by those back in the New York hip-hop scene who were in awe of his highly unique flow as Jay-Z was sweating it. His heartbeat raged, pulsated almost through the roof,

squirled stash in all when those Highway Patrol blues flashed behind him pulling him over. Luckily the canine unit was delayed. The cop group irritated. Pissed the dogs were late. Pissed his search came up empty. Pissed because he knew this young black man with the tilted Yankee his brim and out-of-state plates was holding. Pissed he could do nothing about it and pissed that he had to let him go. Freed from potential arrest, as Jay drove down the Jersey turnpike and watched the canine unit race by him in the other direction. He called it. He had 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one. Jay Z dodged a bullet. He knew it. It was only a matter of time, though, before he'd be caught or killed. He'd already been shot at three times from close range and remarkably survived.

It was a wake-up call. Jay was egotistical enough to suppose that his unscathed survival was divine intervention. He was meant for greater things than the street game. He was special. He knew it. His mother told himself all the time, and lately she wasn't the only one. The rap game he'd had one foot in from his early teens, battling it out on the Marcy House's pavement, beating out rhythms on high school cafeteria tables to rhyme over. He could feel the pole, the allure. He was damn good, better than most. Every time he spit a rhyme in the company of others, he was quickly reminded how good he was, how unique his flow was. He vanquished all comers. He was invited on stage with his hero, rap pioneer Big Daddy Kane, with two other lesser-known rappers like him who were also

studying at the foot of Kane. Tupac Shakur, Queen Latifah. Jay-Z stood out in this talented company, hyping Kane up on stage, filling in for him on the mic while he headed backstage for costume changes. Jay-Z crushed, Kane started imitating his style.

It wasn't long before he was offered the opportunity to rap on other MC's tracks. With every studio guest spot, his reputation grew. But Jay wasn't so easily seduced by the music industry. It was just another hustle, barely more legit and barely less dangerous than the drug game. At least out on the street you knew where you stood with people. In the music business, a cesspool of suited up vipers, you were getting secretly shook down while they shook your hand. In real talk, the money was good, but it wasn't that good.

It wasn't like what he was bringing in from his connections down Interstate 95. Plus, Jay thought most rappers were complete clowns, pretending to be hustlers, dealers, violence, street thugs. He was already all of these things. The game was no game. It was not to be fucked with. You were real or not. You were either in or out. Disinterested, hard, real street politic, practical-minded, criminal-minded,

whatever is inclination at the time. Jay-Z still knew his fate if he stayed in the streets, so when others around him continued to push a rap career, he increasingly softened to the idea. He couldn't get rhyming out of his system anyway, Since he was a young boy, he wrote lyrics in his head, inspired by the storytelling of Slick Rick and the hard flow and lyrical prowess of Rakim. Young Sean Carter used rives to form his own internal identity,

to tell his own story. For years, he kept that story percolating inside, honing his craft in private, even though he had next to know privacy in the notorious Marcy projects. After his father abandoned the family to pursue a blood feud when Sean was 10, he had been a quiet kid, distrustful. He told this story in his head on the street corners while he was hustling. But everyone who heard him freestyle heard that story spill out.

The street hustler brought to life through rhyme. The story was instantly compelling in his voice, the sound of it, all that natural vulnerability it played against Jay's put on cockiness and made him relatable, an A-plus reliable narrator. Whatever efforts he made in the rap game, as a young street entrepreneur, they served as a front for drug-dealing hustle. The first and the 14th of the month,

everyone going to get well, the blighted hopelessness of the mid-80s Marcy housing projects, where for some, food in the pantry was time to buy monthly welfare checks and crackheads could be seen being herded like cattle by predatory dealers as soon as those checks came in.

Jay-Z was one of those dealers. There would be no checks for Jay-Z's mom, just cash. His old man had split, so Jay would take what his environment had to offer and he would provide. Marcy Houses, this is where teenage Jay-Z made his money, and this is where Jay-Z honed his musical talent. All making his bones stealing on the street, he cut his teeth at his mother's kitchen table,

reading the dictionary front to back to improve his vocabulary and thus his freestyle ability. The learned vocab complimented his natural gift. He was a master of that syncopated flow, the kind that slads over the beat like content slide over tectonic plates, revealing the volcanic churning underneath but only if Jehovah commands it, and for Jehovah underneath it all deep down, the smooth, irresistible flow birthed a burning fire of ambition. DJ Clark Kent, who was well aware of Jay's talent, have been trying to sign Jay to Atlantic Records

as soon as Kent got his A&R gig. Jay, ever the hustler, smartly played hard to get. He wasn't interested. And frankly, Kent's bosses at Atlantic weren't that interested, either. Kent knew that if Jay was going to hustle as an artist, he needed a business counterpart to take care of the nasty bits, to push and to protect Jay. Kent hooked him up with Damon Dash, a successful club promoter from up in Harlem. The idea was that Dame would manage Jay, take care of the business while the God MC took care of the rhymes. Kent's inclination was that with the right hustle

behind the right hustler, that a record deal would happen on the quick. The Dame Dash was a exactly that type of hustler. And Jay-Z proved early that his business instincts were as astute as his creative ones. When Atlantic Records eventually passed on Jay Z, Jay and Dash dared to create their own independent record label, Rockefeller Records, to sell Jay Z's debut album, Reasonable Doubt. It was a risk, it was their own money on the table, and that money would be gone if the record flopped. To further bet on himself, to double down on his instincts, Jay then had the audacity to proclaim that this, his first record, would be his last. It was unheard of.

Where other rappers were practically begging for music industry kingmakers to put out their records, Jay was like, yeah, I'm all set, I'll do one and then bounce. Jay had a new kind of attitude, and he had something to say. The streets were his story. He was the real deal. He had a budding and waiting audience for his debut because of his reputation on the street, and the buzz he created by proclaiming that his music career would end almost as soon as it began. It was a master stroke.

Anticipation for the album built up and on its release via distribution deal, Jay and Dame hooked up with priority records in the summer of 1996. Jay Z's Reasonable Doubt debuted at number 23 on the Billboard 200 and charted for 18 weeks. Ultimately, Once the word was out, Jay's rise to the top was as smooth as the ride in the new Lexus he'd purchased. After Reasonable Doubt, Rockefeller leveled up to a distro deal with Def Jammed release of course, his next album, Forget That One and Done Bullshit, Jay was now a star, In My Life, which was followed a year later by Volume 2, Hard Knock Life, with the monster single of the

same name that traded on a little orphan Annie riff of all damn things, and led to the record being certified platinum five times over. Another year, another album, the hustle never stopped. In 1999, Jay-Z was set to release Volume 3, The Life in Times of S. Carter with a rumored collaboration with pop Princess Mariah Carey. 1999 was also the year Jay and Dame founded the fashion label Rockaware. Endorsement deals with other brands weren't an option? No problem.

Start your own brand. Trade on the trends you were setting. Trade on that mafioso hood wrap. Take three sewing machines in a barren downtown office and spin off 80 million in profit in just 18 months. Fuck the middleman. It was a valuable lesson. Own that shit.

Be your own boss, just like you were back. on the corner. Don't take no shit off anyone, ever. Use your own hustle. Use your hustle to get to where you need to get to by any means necessary. Just like Malcolm, just like Fred. But be smart. Stay on the right side of that violence. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherko. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly

Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay. That's another film, Grip I got to. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes.

Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the most. moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says, she's gone, she's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you

never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the exactly right network. Listen to wicked words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex

power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook can feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. By any means necessary to get the criminal off his ban. When a criminal starts misusing me, I am going to use whatever. necessary to get that criminal off my band. Any dirty means to be necessary. Sean Puff Daddy Combs arrested December 1999 on gun charges after a shooting in a Manhattan Club. DMX arrested on gun charges in animal cruelty in New Jersey.

Old dirty bastard, possession of marijuana and crack cocaine. Something was going on in the New York City hip-hop scene. It all went back to the murders of Tupac Shakur and Jay-Z. Brooklyn Brother in Arms, Christopher Biggie Smalls Wallace, aka the notorious BIG. The killings didn't happen in New York, but their infamy in the minds of New York's finest had justified the formation of the NYPD's latest initiative,

the hip-hop task force, or as they took to calling themselves, the rap squad. Their mandate, keep tabs on New York City's big-name MCs, their entourage, rate the danger of shootouts, other violence, or drug charges, make arrests, make headlines. If gangster rap had lyrically picked up on the more violent strains of Black 60s radicalism by way of Compton realism, then it only made sense that just like Fred Hampton's Black Panthers,

rap would have its own Hoover-esque intelligence units keeping tabs from coast to coast. So Jay heard the rumor of the squad, but it worried him little. He was clean. Dealing drugs was in the past. Making records was the now, and he had a banger of an album about to drop. Volume 3, The Life and Times of S. Carter in just a few weeks. He was hoping to hit half a million in sales in the first seven days, certify that shit a massive success from the jump just like everything else he touched. But there was a problem.

The record had been bootlegged, a month in advance of its drop. On the heels of the highly successful pre-released single collaboration with Mariah Carey for the song Heartbreaker, a song that hit number one on the Billboard chart, and a song that had set up the record for explosive sales upon its release. It was all in jeopardy due to the album being bootlegged. Sales were about to be drastically affected in a negative way, and the album blasted out of car stereos all over Manhattan weeks before it hit record stores.

Bootlegs of live shows traded among diehard fans had a long history in the industry, but at the dawn of the internet, bootlegging meant file sharing, not mixed tape. The cost of making infinite new copies of a track was zero, no digital rights management software, and the sun was setting fast on the days of the five-time platinum albums like Jay's last one, and a bootleg in 1999 could drop the floor out from under any album to the tune of millions of dollars. Every effort was made to root out the bootlecker. Like Fred Hampton's William O'Neill, Jay Z's rat fuck came from the inside. Ever paranoid and distrustful, his hustler instincts told him so.

And when Jay started leaning on co-workers at Rockefeller, one name kept coming back on him, Lance Anne Rivera, former business partner to the notorious BIG, Un, as he was called, had produced a track on Jay's forthcoming record and presumably had access. December 1st, 1999, Midtown Manhattan, the Kit Kat Club, the release party for the heavily anticipated,

solo debut by Q-Tip from a tribe called Quest. Sean Puffy Combs, Lil Kim, Buster Rhymes, and Lil Seas, all on the scene. Jay Z rolled up late and deep with his entourage behind him. At the bar, Lance on Rivera, Jay spied him, confronted him with a bootlegging allegation. Fuck that, fuck you, I didn't bootleg shit. Who do you think you even talking to?

Fuck out of my face. Jay headed back to the bar, blinders on, rage, pulsing, darkness closing in. That feeling of being fucked with, losing control, being disrespected, dissed and dismissed, unacceptable. In Jay's previous occupation when you were disrespected, and especially if someone took money out of your pocket, you not only stood your ground,

you let that motherfucker know you were not to be fucked with by any means necessary. It was survival and here, right now, in the Kit Kat club, that familiar survival instinct kicked in and took over. Let me just to find my thug on this one right here. It goes... Jay turned around, beat a line straight back to Un. Bottle in one hand, knife in the other. He got up on him quick.

Witnesses say Jay spoke direct to a la Michael Corleone to Fredo. Lance, you broke my heart. And then smashed the bottle over Un's brother's head. A quick distraction before plunging the five-inch blade into Un's gut. Fuck you, bootleg boy. Let that be a lesson. All hell broke loose in the... the club. Jay-Z and his entourage escaped without arrest, but words spread fast. It was Jigga

who did on. Payback for bootlegging his new record. Lance on Rivera's life was never in serious danger, though. The stabbing was not life-thorning, but the threat to Jay-Z's freedom was now very serious. NYPD's rap squad was on the prowl, and by the end of the week, Jay-Z voluntarily turned himself in to Manhattan's Midtown South precinct. is busted. Jay-Z turned himself in tonight and the cop started working on his rap sheet, accusing him of a stabbing at a trendy party. Kimberly Richardson is at Midtown South right now. Kimberly. Louisiana, just a few hours ago, police here at Midtown South arrested Sean Carter, better known as Jay-Z.

The rap star voluntarily turned himself in here at the precinct earlier this evening. Now, Carter is being held here in connection with that stabbing fight that erupted at the Kid Cat Club last night. But just a few moments ago, Carter's attorney had this to say. He's not involved in this. He's not involved. He's not involved. You know, I'm not a perfect person.

Perfect person. I have my dark days also, you know? Dark days. I have my dark days also, you know. I have my dark days also, you know. When the smoke cleared, Jay Z was charged with the stabbing of Lance on Rivera. Jay pleaded not guilty, gambling. over a potential 15-year prison sentence. He lawyered up, taking a cue from his buddy, Sean Puff Daddy Combs,

who was at the time facing his own indictment for gun and bribery charges and staring down 15 years himself. Puffy's attorney was notorious mob lawyer Murray Richmond, who had famously defended members of all five New York families at different times, most notably John Gotti, and was known for his colorful quips to the press, having reportedly said, I love murder, always one less witness to worry about. Murray Richmond may have been a smart ass, but he was not without smarts. Sitting in Jay Z's Trump Tower suite ahead of Jay's day in court, he could see the writing on the wall. The two of them were playing cards and watching coverage of Puffy's trial on repeat.

The local New York channels seemed to be covering it 24-7. A block away from Puffy's trial, the terrorists accused of truck bombing the World Trade Center in 19. were also on trial, and the press could give a shit. It was all puffy all the time. To those as street smart as Murray Richmond and Jay Z, it was a clear sign. Jay's trial would be just as big of a deal as Puff Daddy's, and thus prosecutors would be twice as aggressive as they normally would. And there was only one smart thing to do.

Plead guilty. So that's what Jay Z did. After a negotiation, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. mean a assault charge for the stabbing of Lance on Rivera. He took the three-year probation settlement with the state and reportedly settled out of court with Rivera for somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million. It is unclear whether Lance Rivera ever did bootleg Jay's album, but it didn't matter. Jay Z has gone on to say that the event was in a way a blessing. It straightened him out, caused him to change his ways to leave the street behavior behind and incorporate his hustle in a whole new manner in a way that would make him fabulously

successful in the wealthiest black musician of all time. Testing, $1 million, $2 million, $3 million. Over the years, I've been part of the awards for any different performer, performer, MC, presenter, recipient, this is the top

of the moment of my little walk on the life and I've been doing a little more I think of I'm a little more

than I did 25 years ago that's because I'm what as a vernacular as a retired at man MCMC

how would you like to be remembered well I think I would like to be remembered as a man who brought an innovation to popular singing, a peculiar, unique fashion. I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living his life and who had a good friend, fine family. And I don't think I could ask him any more than that.

Jay-Z was retiring at 33 years old. This was his last show, Madison Square Garden, in New York. York, King of the Concrete Jungle where dreams are made of that empire state of mind, going out on top, the new Sinatra. Jay-Z made it there. He made it everywhere. Since the stabbing incident, he'd settled down. A rumor had it, Jay had hooked up with pop goddess Beyonce.

A culture-shaking power couple was on the make, and Jay-Z's personal stock was on the rise. He was maneuvering a break between him and his Rockefeller business partner, Dame Dash. for Jay it was an effort to leave that street hustle behind completely. Dane was an old dog. New tricks in the boardroom were not an option. The split would not be amicable. Jay was in demand. Dane was still on that street grind.

Jay was being courted by nearly every major record label to take their reins and lead them into the 21st century. It was clear to label suits on both coasts that Jay had an inscrutable eye for talent. He'd recruited, collaborated with, and helped launch the careers of Farrell Williams, Kanye West, and others. Of all the labels who came calling, Def Jam offered the most value to Jay. In addition to being an iconic record label with artists who in part provided the musical

building blocks to Jay Z's formative years, LL Cool J, Slick, Public Enemy, and Beastie Boys, Def Jam was also Rockefeller Records parent company, so Def Jam already owned 50% of Rockefeller, and they also own the master recordings to Jay-Z's records, otherwise known in the music business as the Masters. An artist masters are a potential gold mine of future profits, especially for an artist that's successful and prolific as Jay-Z. It's extremely rare for major label artists to own and maintain control of their masters. It's a right that is reserved for the biggest, most successful artists of all time, if at all.

We're talking about the Michael Jackson's and Bruce Springsteen. of the world, and even then the right to own one's masters is a right that is hard-fought and rarely won. In a business move so cunning it can only be described as Michael Corleone-esque, Jay-Z vanquished Dame Dash and seized control of his masters at the same time. After the release of his supposed last album, The Black Album, and his retirement show at Madison Square Garden, Jay-Z accepted the position as president and CEO of Def Jam recording. in exchange for ownership of his masters reverting to him.

As part of the deal, Dame Dash would stay on to run Rockefeller, but Rockefeller would have to sell its remaining 50% of the company to Def Jam. The result would mean a cash windfall for Dame Dash. But with Jay-Z now running Def Jam and Def Jam now fully owning Rockefeller, in effect, it also meant that Jay-Z not only controlled his master recordings, but he also controlled his former label Rockefeller, and by extension, his former business partner, the now flush but powerless by comparison to Jay,

head of Rockefeller, Dame Dash. Needless to say, this was an arrangement that did not hold for Dame Dash. He quickly split to start a different record label, Rock for Life. It's been said before, but it's true. Jay-Z brought his street hustle to the boardroom, and it didn't stop with Def Jam. When hustlers start to stack their paper, more money than they can spend on cars and jewelry and women, the move is to put the money back out onto the street and have it make more money.

For Jay-Z, the street hustle was over. He put his money into the free market with a series of brilliant investments. He broke off $2 million for Uber as the ride share company was launching. He then, unsolicited, wired another $3 million to company founders for a bigger stake. And they returned it, but regardless, Jay's investment is now worth a reported 70 million. And Jay was brought in as part owner of the Brooklyn Nets NBA franchise. He invested in the Uber of the Air, the private jet app, JetSmartre. There's his sports club franchise, the 4040 Club.

And of course, he retains a stake in Rockaware after selling a majority of the company to Iconics for $204 million. In addition to his many real estate holdings, Jayze's art collection consists of Picasso's and Baskets, and in a move rivaling the cunning of the Def Jam deal, Jay-Z purchased a majority stake in the streaming service title in order to control the distribution of his master recordings, which has in turn allowed him to make record-breaking marketing deals for his current recordings. Oh yeah, he retired for making music again, with mega-brands Samson in Sprint. After Jay's tenure at Def Jam, he started Rock Nation, another record label, a music management company and a sports agency all rolled into one to steer the careers and pull in 10 to 20

percent in fees from artists and athletes like Rihanna, Nick Jonas, and Domican Sioux, and the beta boy himself, Kyrie Irving. Along with Bacardi, Jay-Z is the co-owner of the Cognac company Duce, and to date, his smartest investment was his purchase of the champagne company Armand de Brignac for an estimated $200 million, which has given him a return of roughly $300 million, which is 30% of Jay's portfolio and a move that pushed his net worth to more than a billion dollars. Remarkably, with all of his music success, profits from his recordings and publishing only amount to about $70 million. The totality of his financial success has elevated Jay-Z far beyond the music industry. The self-made man from the Marcy Housing Projects now rubs elbows with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and perhaps most famously Barack Obama.

Ambition, absolutely. Talent, without a doubt. As a rapper, Jay-Z is the goat. He's Tom Brady, Air Jordan, Mike Tyson, Jimmy Hendrix, and Frank Sinatra all rolled into one. And not just because he has more number one albums than Elvis Presley, or Michael Jackson, or Prince, or Elton John, or Madonna, or anyone ever in the history of music with the exception of the Beatles. And not because of his unmistakable flow, a technique uniquely his, immediately recognized. recognizable as Jay-Z. It's because of his hustle. A work ethic learned on the corner, selling crack, reciting rhymes in his head over and over. Jehovah so focused that to this day the man does not actually write his lyrics on paper. It's all flow, all the time. For Jay-Z, the hustle wasn't just a means of survival in Brooklyn's Marcy Housing Projects, it was a lifelong learning experience, an evolution. Jay-Z was smart enough to use the street to propel him out of his circumstance. But once that street hustle threatened to tear him down with his violent approach to conflict resolution, Jay-Z was smart enough to recognize that a new hustle was needed to survive,

to thrive, because real hustlers never die. They just multiply. This isn't a new rule. This is a new rule. ancient wisdom of the alpha, of the ascendant ones. Jay-Z's illumination is no longer a mystery. And for some, for those who hold the keys, who know the code to the Magna Carta, the map to the Holy Grail, that is a disgrace.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at Disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.

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