Dirty Whorelebrity News

Jay-Z covers the July issue of Billboard magazine, below are excerpts from the article which you can read in full HERE.

ON LEAVING DEF JAM:

“I still owed an album to Def Jam, but I wanted to have it back for a number of reasons, the most important being that it wasn’t consistent with the type of business I planned for me or where I was positioning myself. Everything in my life I had taken charge of, but yet I was still an artist signed to a label. It seemed a little archaic in my plans. I’ve always prided myself on being a principled person. It was more so the principle than the amount of money. It was about owning my own masters and owning my own companies, but you have to pay for the privilege, and that comes at a premium.”

ON THE RELEASE OF “The Blueprint 3″ (Sept. 11):

“This being the end of the trilogy, I wanted to bring it full circle. The first ‘Blueprint’ was based on soul samples and more of a place where I came from and the records I listened to growing up with my mom and pop. This ‘Blueprint,’ I liken it to a new classic, simply because we — Usher, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, myself — are becoming the people that we looked up to musically growing up, like Marvin Gaye and Frank Sinatra.”

ON HIS TRACK D.O.A.

“In hip-hop our job is, once a trend becomes a gimmick, to get rid of it. We’ve done that since the beginning of time. This isn’t some newfangled thing. When people were wearing the black medallions Ice Cube came along and said, ‘Get it outta here!’ When Hammer was selling 50,000 records, Q-Tip came and said, ‘Get it outta here!’ Then Biggie Smalls came and said, ‘Your life is played out like Kwame in the f—ing polka dots. Get the polka dots outta here!’ It’s just a part of hip-hop.”

(cover source)