Jay-Z

Bio

Shawn Carter is Jay-Z. He is the single most successful business artist hip-hop has produced. By 2019, Forbes formally listed him as a billionaire — the first rapper to hit ten figures. Before that, he was the rapper whose first album, Reasonable Doubt (1996), is widely considered one of the five greatest rap albums of all time. Both things are true simultaneously, which is rare.

He was born Shawn Corey Carter in Brooklyn in 1969 and raised in the Marcy Houses, a public housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant. His father left when Shawn was nine. He grew up running with kids who were running with the late-eighties crack economy, which is the recurring source of imagery on basically every Jay-Z album from 1996 to 2007. He moved cocaine in New Jersey and Washington DC for years before he committed to rapping. He has said the rap career started as a fallback.

Reasonable Doubt came out on June 25, 1996, on a label Jay-Z co-founded with Damon Dash and Kareem "Biggs" Burke when no major would sign him. Roc-A-Fella Records. The album is a thirteen-track distillation of a specific Brooklyn drug-dealer's voice: opulent, paranoid, allusive, internally rhymed, deeply mature for a twenty-six-year-old debut. It sold modestly at first. It sold every year after.

The Blueprint came out on September 11, 2001 — the actual day, by coincidence. Kanye West produced four of the tracks, including the opener. Jay's third top-ten album. Then The Black Album in 2003, sold as his retirement record. Then he un-retired. Then American Gangster (2007). Then Magna Carta Holy Grail (2013). Then 4:44 (2017), the confession album, where he addresses, among other things, his infidelity to Beyoncé and the depth of damage that did to his actual life.

He has been married to Beyoncé since 2008. They have three children. He has run Def Jam (briefly, 2004 to 2007), founded Roc Nation (2008), founded Tidal (sold to Square for $300 million in 2021), and become a part-owner of multiple sports franchises. His net worth in 2024 was reported above two billion dollars. The Marcy-to-billionaire arc is, depending on your politics, either an inspiring American success story or a cautionary tale about the limits of hip-hop's relationship with capital. Probably both.

In rap-history terms what matters is the rapping. Jay's verses are the most-quoted of any MC of his generation. He still records. He still releases features. He is, in 2026, fifty-six years old, still the most institutionally important figure in hip-hop, and still, more than fifty percent of the time, the best rapper on whatever song he is on. The Marcy kid kept his pen.