With the help of brilliant music minds like Kanye West, Just Blaze, and the Neptunes, Jay dictated the course of hip-hop and emerged as a keen songwriter who knew exactly how to maximize the strengths of his collaborators. He released at least one project annually, while nurturing promising new talent like Philadelphia-based rappers Freeway and Beanie Sigel. The sound fit Jay just as well as one of Biggie’s oversized Coogi sweaters might have - there are hints of genius, but he was clearly still finding his voice and place in the art form.įrom 1998 through 2003, Jay was unstoppable. 1, which took more than a few cues from the flashy rap aesthetic that Puff Daddy had been proliferating through his Bad Boy label. He followed that with the inconsistent, overly polished In My Lifetime, Vol. He’d adopt a slower, more conversational pace for his 1996 masterpiece debut LP, Reasonable Doubt, a project that was self-released after his undeniable talent was denied by every major label he approached. Jay moved in and out of rapper circles in the late ’80s and early ’90s, popping up on songs with his mentor, Jaz-O, and Big Daddy Kane. But he continued to develop his craft, taking stock of hip-hop’s evolving aesthetics and mastering hyperspeed raps in the vein of East Coast rap duo Das EFX. But as an adolescent, he put his hobby on the backburner and crack sales on the front. He’d spend his time banging on the kitchen table at his 534 Flushing Avenue apartment, rhyming to the percussion he created. Jay-Z’s adolescence coincided with the Reagan ’80s. His merging of thinking-man street raps with commercial hits paved the way for artists like Kendrick Lamar and J. His catalogue contains some of the most potent imagery and lucid storytelling about poverty and the desperation that it breeds, all while dominating mainstream pop music, in a delicate tightrope act that almost no one else has ever been able to manage for the span of time that Jay has. And now, two decades (and two dozen solo LPs) later, Jay-Z has become one of music’s all-time most important voices. Def Jam, impressed with Roc-A-Fella’s early independent success, agreed to sign a joint venture with the young imprint on one condition: They needed seven albums from Jay. The skinny kid from Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects intended to drop just one album - a musical I was here statement - before partnering with a major label and falling back into a comfy executive role, becoming a vessel to launch hopeful Roc-A-Fella acts like Memphis Bleek and Christión into orbit.īut the industry had different plans. Pusha T first heard about Succession from his manager, who said the rapper reminded him of Logan Roy.If Jay-Z had his way back in 1996, this list would be too brief to warrant compiling. (When I ask him about this comparison, he demurs: “I mean, I’m a little bit. ”) He happened to meet Britell in Los Angeles, at a Pharrell recording session. Pusha says he caught up on Succession’s first season and then Britell pitched him the remix. “We talked about the connection to power and its dynamic, issues writ large: struggle, pain, all of the things we could deal with,” Britell says. Then Pusha went into the studio: “ gave me this track, and I said all right. I said, ‘So I’mma go back, and I’m gonna listen to it, and I’mma just come up with some things.’”īritell was happy with his first pass, Pusha says, but someone else at HBO felt the lyrics gave away too many plot details from season two, which hadn’t aired yet. “I was like, ‘How, I didn’t even see it?!’” he laughs. “So I tweaked some things because the lines were a bit too detailed. I think didn’t want to ask me to redo anything. The result is exactly what you’d want from Pusha T rapping over a track as good as the Succession theme. For the remix, Britell made the sound bigger and bolder with more bass and hi-hat - “The bass probably shouldn’t be that big, it’s too big for itself,” Britell says - and adding a choral arrangement and a drop divine enough to bring a tear to mine eye. Pusha doesn’t rap about the Roy family specifically, but about the show’s themes: family and money, but also avarice, betrayal, and loving someone as you’re sabotaging them. The title is “Puppets,” but it’s as much about the person pulling the strings. (For the record, Push says he thinks Roman is the one to take over the company.) “It’s a free fall when I leave y’all,” Pusha snaps on the remix, perhaps showing his affinity for Logan. “The greed, the resentment, the idea anybody is basically disposable - that’s a gangsta movie type of quality. On Succession, it’s involving family, it’s like, Whoa! It’s a bit more shocking,” Pusha says.
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