Jay-Z displayed his keen business sense at an early age when he established his own record label to release his music. Alongside his successful career in hip-hop, he has founded other companies while making several smart investments, including in tech firms like Uber.
Early Life
Jay-Z was born Shawn Corey Carter on December 4, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York. He is the youngest of four siblings born to Gloria Carter, who raised her son largely as a single mother.
Shawn Carter grew up in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects. As he would rap about later in life, he turned to street life at a young age, selling drugs and witnessing firsthand the violence in his neighborhood.
Carter initially began rapping under his childhood nickname Jazzy before adopting the stage name Jay-Z. After recording the song “The Originators” with rapper Jaz-O, he appeared alongside the older performer on Yo! MTV Raps in 1989.
Hip-Hop Career
Despite his television appearance and connection to Jaz-O, who had signed to a major label, Jay-Z failed to break into the music industry on his own. That changed in 1996, when, displaying the enterprising spirit that would later be evident in his business dealings, he established Roc-A-Fella Records with two friends.
Through the label, he released his debut album. While it eventually went platinum, Reasonable Doubt was only a modest commercial success at the time of its 1996 release, peaking at No. 23 on the Billboard 200. What it lacked in initial sales, however, it made up for in acclaim. Fans praised the album, heralding it as a classic, a view that has gone on to be shared by critics today.
Jay-Z followed Reasonable Doubt with the more pop-leaning In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (1997). In 1998, he returned with Vol. 2…Hard Knock Life. The album spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 200 and earned Jay-Z the Grammy for Best Rap Album.
The rapper continued to have success over the ensuing years, returning to No. 1 with 1999’s Vol. 3…Life and Times of S. Carter. His 2001 effort The Blueprint was both a critical and commercial success, with some critics deeming it his finest album.
Business Career
By the time Jay-Z announced his retirement from rapping prior to the release of 2003’s The Black Album, he had already been making a name for himself in the business world. In 1999, he founded Rocawear, a clothing line he later sold for $204 million.
When Def Jam Recordings, the distributor for some of his music, fell on hard times, the label asked the rapper to step in as president. Jay-Z accepted the history-making offer—but not before making a deal with Def Jam that gave him back ownership of his master recordings. As a testament to the value of this move, Forbes estimated the rapper’s music catalog to be worth $75 million as of 2019.
While fellow hip-hop legends like Dr. Dre had led their own boutique labels, Jay-Z was the first to serve in the top role at a major label. Within months of coming on as president, he signed Rihanna and Young Jeezy, and his tenure also saw him bring other successful acts like Ne-Yo to the label.
By the end of 2004, Jay-Z had expanded his business interests further when he invested $1 million in the New Jersey Nets. During his tenure as a partial owner of the NBA franchise, he helped relocate the team now known as the Brooklyn Nets to his home borough.
Return to Hip-Hop
Jay-Z had collaborated with other artists during his retirement from rapping, but he restarted his music career in earnest in 2006 with the album Kingdom Come. American Gangster arrived in 2007, and in 2009 he and Alicia Keys scored a No. 1 hit with “Empire State of Mind.”
Each of Jay-Z’s next four albums reached No. 1, including Watch the Throne, his 2011 collaboration with Kanye West. He partnered with another artist—his wife, Beyoncé— on the 2018 album Everything Is Love, which peaked at No. 2.
Expanding His Business Portfolio
Jay-Z founded another record label, Roc Nation, in 2008. Created as a joint venture with Live Nation, Roc Nation has grown into a sprawling entertainment company that represents many big-name artists and athletes.
Jay-Z’s diverse business interests have also included tech investments. According to TechCrunch, he invested $2 million in Uber in 2013, becoming a part owner of the ride-sharing app. He later reportedly attempted to invest an additional $5 million, but his offer was refused.
He then became a majority owner of another tech platform in 2015 when he paid $60 million to buy Aspiro AB, the parent company of the music-streaming service Tidal. By the end of 2019, Forbes reported that the rapper had entered the ranks of the world’s billionaires.
Jay-Z, who guided a merger between Tidal and Sprint in 2016, sold his remaining stake in the streaming service to Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey for more than $300 million in 2021. In the same year, he invested $19 million in Flowhub, a company providing software to the cannabis industry. Most recently, his firm, Marcy Venture Partners, headed a $16.5 million round of funding for Stellar Pizza, a tech startup that plans to utilize robots to make pizza.