Jay Z Net Worth

Biography of Jay-Z

Mankind knows many examples of how a person born into a poor family rose to heights that a mere mortal could not even dream of, but the story of Jay Z is one of the most incredible.

Childhood

The biography of Jay Z began in Brooklyn, in a council house on Marcy Avenue. Sean (real name of the rapper) was born on December 4, 1969 to Gloria Carter and Ednis Reeves.

The boy grew up with two sisters and a brother, played basketball and rode a bicycle, and he also loved to read and wrote poetry. At school, the future artist star studied well, his teachers recall that, even when he came unprepared, he knew how to answer the lesson and grasped information literally on the fly.

The house had a large collection of vinyl, parents loved music, and until the early 80s the family lived modestly, but with dignity. However, after Sean’s uncle was robbed and stabbed on the street, his father, Ednis, became involved in drugs and soon left home, leaving Gloria to take care of the children alone.

Sean was 5 years old, and he took his father’s departure hard, regarding it as a betrayal. Mother was overworked at work and took on any proposals. After school, Sean worked at the local grocery store, but brought in pennies. According to him, the family did not starve, the mother managed to pay bills and buy food, but the realization of poverty came through the realization that his sneakers were about to fall apart, and his clothes were bought in second-hand and smelled of antiseptic.

After graduating from high school, Sean entered Westinghouse Technical College, where he met future rappers The Notorious BIG and Busta Rhymes. He did his first freestyles on a cheap boombox given to him by his mother, who encouraged his passion for music.

Probably, Jay really could become a drug dealer, but he did not break. It is known that after leaving college, Sean lived for months in Trenton, New Jersey, where he sold drugs. Gloria knew what her son was doing, but she never spoke directly to him about it, but only expressed her fears for his fate. Sean himself knew that he had to stop, because if he continued to sell crack, then either prison or death awaited him. And he managed to get out of business. As Mr. Carter himself later said, the music saved him.

Creative career. Start

In the early 90s, Sean returned home from another “flight” to Trenton and never returned there. He rapped, honed his rhymes, and wrote lyrics that reflected his street experience, dissatisfaction with “Reaganomics” and social inequality. When enough material had accumulated, Sean began to look for a producer.

Bypassing many record labels, he realized two important things. Firstly, they do not really want to deal with him, and secondly, even if the contract is concluded, the conditions will not suit him. There was only one way out of this situation, and in 1995, together with Brooklyn buddies Karim Burke and Damon Dash, Sean created and registered Roc-a-Fella Records, his own label, which was destined to become an Empire.

Sean, already calling himself Jay Z, released his first album at the end of 1996. He chose a pseudonym by chance: one of the familiar rappers was called Jazz, it was he who noted in Sean a unique combination of reading style and semantic component. For some time they tried to work together as Jazz and Jazzy, but then their paths diverged, and Jazzy transformed first into Jay-Z, and then into Jay Z.

“Reasonable Doubt” was created with the participation of an old college friend, Christopher, known as The Notorious BIG, and was generally well received, but later it will reach platinum status and be included in the top 500 greatest albums.

Since 1997, the rapper, who was already approaching the age of thirty, released an album a year. The second album did not bring him satisfaction, but the third justified even the wildest expectations. After going on tour with Vol.2: Hard Knock Life, Jay took the ratings to incredible heights and became the third largest and most important rapper after Tupac and The Notorious BIG

Rap king

“Vol.2: Hard Knock Life” sold over five million copies, songs from the album were played on all radio stations. Since 1998, Jay has been the No. 1 star, evil tongues have claimed that the death of Tupac in 1996 and The Notorious BIG in 1997 contributed to his ascent to Olympus. These rumors upset Jay endlessly: he respected Tupac and had been friends with Christopher for many years. And again, as in my youth, music became an outlet. From 1997 to 2002, Jay had more hits than any other artist and became an icon in the music world.

With business sense and an iron grip, he launched his own brand in 2002, and in the first year Rocawear sold more than $200 million in apparel and accessories, and Roc-a-Fella Records went full steam ahead, becoming the world’s largest record label and production center.

In 2003, “Crazy in Love”, created and sung by Jay with Beyoncé Nose, saw the light of day, after which the musician shocked the world with the announcement that he was ending his musical career. However, he was gone for only three years, returning triumphantly in 2006 with “Kingdom Come”, quickly acquiring a platinum glow.

After releasing three more records, opening a network of sports clubs, participating in bold investment projects, in 2017 Mr. Carter recorded the most honest and beautiful album “4:44”, which beat the success of all previous ones. Jay once again demonstrated that he is, first of all, a brilliant musician, a No. 1 rapper, but no longer willing to prove anything to anyone. 4:44 won a Grammy for Album of the Year.

Most of the album’s songs are directly addressed to the rapper’s relatives, his children and wife, there is a touching song written about Jay’s childhood, about the street where he grew up.

The song “Living in The Shadow” contains the musician’s thoughts about his mother, Gloria, who in 2016 admitted that she had been a lesbian all her life and struggled with attraction to women.

The song “Adnis” is the saddest and most touching, the most lively, it is about Ednis Reeves, and in fact is a belated revelation, a request for forgiveness and words of love and gratitude unspoken during the life of his father.

Jay Z personal life

Jay’s relationship with Beyoncé began in 2002, but the couple avoided discussing it even after they officially married in 2008. It is known that the singer’s engagement ring is from Miss Lorraine Schwartz herself and costs more than $5 million.

In the winter of 2012, their daughter Blue Ivy was born in the same secrecy. Beyoncé even went to the clinic under an assumed name.

Two years later, something in the relationship of the spouses went wrong. A video of Beyonce’s sister beating Sean has leaked online. There were suggestions in the press that the betrayal of Jay Z could be the reason. Beyoncé’s album Lemonade, released in 2016, lifted the veil of secrecy. Indeed, the rapper cheated on his beloved, but they managed to leave it in the past and start from scratch.

In the summer of 2017, the couple welcomed twins Rumi and Sir Carter.

Jay Z now

In the summer of 2018, Jay Z and Beyoncé began a tour of the UK, in which they presented the result of their joint work “Everything Is Love”, and the project was called The Carters. Concerts were also held in France and other European countries.

At the end of 2018, the star couple visited South Africa and performed a concert honoring the memory of Nelson Mandela. As of 2018, the rap king’s net worth was estimated at nearly $1 billion, and several books have been written about Jay Z’s empire.