In his first interview since the 4:44 release, JAY-Z sat down with Rap Radar Podcast host Elliot Wilson and B-Dot Miller for part one of a two-part interview that was released Friday (Aug. 18) to further unpack the messages of 4:44.
“This album has a lot of topics that’s why it had to be so short, it’s so condensed,” he said. “It’s so dense with subject matters and all these other things that if it was longer, you wouldn’t be able to take it; it would wear you out. It had to get to a point really quickly and be as dense as it is and No I.D. what he’s doing with the samples, he’s playing samples like jazz improv. No one’s ever chopped records up the way those records are chopped up.”
At his Los Angeles area mansion, he goes on to discuss how 4:44 came together with producer No I.D., the massive marketing plan, putting so much content into a 10-song LP, 4:44‘s ranking with all his solo projects, Billboard not counting corporations pre-purchasing albums and free downloads, Tyler the Creator’s recent rant towards TIDAL, Spotify vs. TIDAL, empowering African-Americans, the controversial money phone lyric on “The Story of O.J.,” and why is hasn’t been reconciled, the infamous elevator fight with Solange, and Jay confirms the 4:44 album title theory is real.
Later, the subject of Kanye West comes up.
“It’s not even about Kanye, it really isn’t,” he said. “His name is there, just because it’s just the truth of what happened. But the whole point is ‘You got hurt because this person was talking about you on a stage.’ But what really hurt me was, you can’t bring my kids and my wife into it. Kanye’s my little brother. He’s talked about me 100 times. He made a song called ‘Big Brother.’ We’ve gotten past bigger issues. But you brought my family into it, now it’s a problem with me. That’s a real, real problem. And he knows it’s a problem.”
Issues with JAY-Z came to a head for Kanye last year when he launched into multiple rants during concerts about Hov and Beyonce, and lamented the fact that their kids never played together.
“He knows that he crossed the line,” said JAY-Z. “I know him. He knows. I know he knows, because we’ve never let this much space go between one of our disagreements, and we’ve had many, because that’s who we are. That’s what I like about him. He’s an honest person, he’s open and he’ll say things and he’s wrong a lot of times and he’ll confront it.”
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