Jay-Z has had a pretty solid year, much like any other year actually. With the release of 4:44 earlier this year, the album was well-received critically and commercially. While Jay himself hasn't been doing much press to promote, he's been using his TIDAL streaming service to push his album in a creative manner. Thusfar he's been dropping music videos for a good chunk of the album that premiere on TIDAL and he's also been doing little footnotes of each song, where more details are brought forth on the creative process and inception of the songs.
With TIDAL, hip hop journalist Elliot Wilson relaunched his "Rap Radar" podcast that is exclusively available on TIDAL. With his co-host B.Dot, the two have in depth conversations with some of hip hop's most talked about artist. Thusfar, they've had Cardi B, Irv Gotti, A$AP Twelvyy and more on the show. Today, they release their 10th episode which serves as part one of their an interview with Jay-Z.
In this episode, Jay-Z sits down with the two journalist to talk deeply about his album 4:44 and more. While most interviews typically talk more about a rapper's personal life, Elliot Wilson and B.Dot really dig deep into Jay's most recent album.
Off top, Jay-Z talks about how he began working on it. Especially being an older rapper, he says that he began studying timeless artists before he got into recording the project.
"Before I started this album, I studied like not just hip hop, any genre. I studied Prince, I studied Michael." Jay tells the podcast. He goes onto say "I really had to like think about what I wanted to say [on this album]. Think about what was the next thing, the next thing to I wanted to say. I didn't want to just make an album just to put out some music, I wanted it to be important. So it took me a minute to get to that point."
4:44 is definitely one of the best hip hop projects of the year and is one of Jay's most personal. Both Elliot Wilson and B.Dot do a great job at picking at his brain in part one of their interview with Hov.
Check out part one of their interview with Jay-Z below:
