One of the songs Jay-Z writes about extensively in the book is "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)," a single from his third album Vol. 'What's that? I said I was the greatest something?' " Think about when you can't remember a word and it drives you crazy. I've lost a couple albums' worth of great material. Since his first album, he says, he's never written down any of his lyrics. By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape." As I got further and further away from home and my notebook, I had to memorize these rhymes - longer and longer and longer. Then I would transfer them into the notebook. "And I'd write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back.
"I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper bag," he says. He normally wrote down his material in a green notebook he carried around with him - but he never took the notebook with him on the streets, he says. So at that young age, you're not thinking about the destruction you're causing your own community."Īt the time he was selling, Jay-Z was also coming up with rhymes. You're thinking about paying the extra light bill. "You're thinking about buying some food for the house. "At 14 15 years old, you're thinking about sneakers or you're thinking about some sort of relief from all of the pain you're feeling," he says.