Jay Z called into Big Boy’s radio show to speak on a variety of subjects, including abandoning the hyphen in his name, the improvement of his live performance, and the possibility of “Watch The Throne 2”.
Jay Z has made quite the promotional run in the last few months, and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. The rapper called into Big Boy’s morning show on power 106 to speak on a variety of topics. On top of revealing that he was set to film the “Holy Grail” video following the interview, Jay shared some words on honing his perfomance skills, Watch The Throne 2, and the benefits of shouting out Cap’n Crunch.
On whether he saw his touring success coming: “No, absolutely not. Take it back to 98 when I wanted to take out the Hard Knock Life tour, and they was telling me that I that I couldn’t take out rappers. That I had to take out R&B acts just to play arenas.”
On being named one of the best live acts by Rolling Stone: “That feels really good, because I really sucked when I first started performing. I really worked at it. I was one of the first guys to really work with a band for The Roots Unplugged, so it feels good to have that sort of accolade.”
On Watch The Throne 2: “We’ve definitely spoken about it. We don’t have any dates lined up, but we definitely spoke about dropping solo albums and then going back to do Watch The Throne 2, so we’ll see what happens.”
On Kanye West’s outspoken personality: “We always have discussions but you know the thing about him is, he’s the same person he was when I met him. He’s just really passionate about the things he cares about, he’s a passionate person. Above and beyond all that, he’s a grown man. Someone called me about some J. Cole lyrics, I’m like what you want me to do?”
On Yeezy’s “let Jay drop him from the team” line from “Cold”: “On my birthday, we were on tour, he said the rap in the room, and everybody said ‘I thought it was a great line.’ People have to understand that it’s entertainment. It’s rap music –sometimes it rubs you the wrong way– but it’s rap music, it’s fun.”
On the disappearance of his hyphen: “That was like 3 years ago, I don’t know how that story resurfaced, but I guess it was a slow news day. The hyphen was really big back in the day. It’s not useful anymore. I had umlauts over one of the letters, I removed that too.”
On his fame and presence in pop culture: “It’s the gift and the curse, it’s good and it’s bad. [They gave me] 99 boxes of Cap’n Crunch so I guess that’s the good part of it.”
On rap’s influence on race relations: “Hip Hop has done so much for racial relations. It doesn’t get the proper credit. It’s always demonized. People point out all the bad things about it, but no one mentions that his brought all kinds of races of people together.”
On the “Picasso Baby” video: “I just wanted to shake it up. Everyone expected Holy Grail to come first. Let’s shoot Picasso. Let’s do things just because we feel like doing it.”
On a new track with Nas, Justin Timberlake, & Timbaland: “It’s a bit beyond a concept in Timbaland’s mind, because we started it, but we need to get back in there and finish it.”
Listen to the full interview below.
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