It's been exactly 30 years since Jay-Z gave the world "Dead Presidents," and now, it's finally hit streaming services. In honor of the anniversary, new vinyl, cassette, and CD editions of it have also been made available for purchase.
The hit was released back in 1996 as the lead single from the mogul's debut album, Reasonable Doubt. Ultimately, however, a reworked version with new verses called "Dead Presidents II" landed on the final tracklist instead.
Needless to say, fans are happy to hear that they can now listen to the song on their favorite streaming services. "30 years later and still timeless," one Twitter/X user claims. "Nice one. Classic," another writes. Someone else simply says, "Finally."
DJ Vlad'z Jay-Z Tweet
News of the original version of "Dead Presidents" hitting streaming services comes just after Jay-Z changed his name back to JAŸ-Z on those same platforms. This, of course, led fans to speculate. Some suspected that a special anniversary edition of Reasonable Doubt could be on the way, while others hoped that the release of an entirely new project was imminent. For now, it remains unclear whether or not Jay-Z has anything else up his sleeve.
News of the streaming release also comes just a few days after DJ Vlad made waves online by posting a satirical tweet about Jay-Z, Tory Lanez, and Megan Thee Stallion. In it, he jokingly accused the Roc Nation founder of paying him to support Meg amid her legal issues with Lanez. In the days following the tweet, Vlad clarified several times that it was a joke. Regardless, he hopped back on Twitter/X yesterday to make sure everyone was on the same page.
"I tried to make this post as ridiculous as possible, but after 14 million impressions, it seems like millions of people still think that I was serious," he wrote in part. "I was not. Everything in this post was made up. I was never paid by Roc Nation, nor was Jay-Z involved in any of these outlandish things."
