Jay-Z

Pop Culture Happy Hour

The episode explores the new HBO docuseries 'JAY-Z In 8', where Jay-Z and producer Rick Rubin dissect his musical catalog. Hosts Aisha Harri

Key takeaways

• The docuseries features high-quality audio and on-screen lyrics to clarify long-standing lyrical debates.
• Critics argue the series avoids necessary friction by having a celebrity interviewer (Rick Rubin) avoid difficult topics like the Nas beef.

Main topics

• JAY-Z In 8 docuseries
• Hip-hop legacy and lyricism

Notable quotes

It's like old school rap genius annotations or a collegiate English masterclass, but make it high art.

Conclusion

While technically impressive and historically significant for hip-hop

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This message comes from Keep It. If you have an itch for pop culture news, look no further than Crooked Media's Keep It podcast. Every Wednesday, Keep It will lead you through the entertainment news mines and Hollywood gossip. Listen on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:20) So you may have noticed Jay-Z's been everywhere lately. It's been 30 years since his acclaimed debut, Reasonable Doubt. And to celebrate, he put on a series of sold-out, star-studded concerts at Yankee Stadium, made a big show of cutting off his famous locks, and now this. Jay-Z in 8, an HBO docuseries where Hove dissects song lyrics across his catalog with the storied producer Rick Rubin. The obvious play here is to further cement his legacy as one of the most revered lyricists of our time. But Jay-Z's always been this kind of polarizing figure when it comes to how he's moved as a business mogul and in his personal life. So who is this series for exactly and does it do what it sets out to do? I'm Aisha Harris and we're going to get into that here on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour with culture writer and critic Shamira Ibrahim. Hi Shamira, great to have you here. Speaker 5 (1:11) Hey, Aisha. Great to be here, as per usual. Speaker 1 (1:14) Yes, yes, yes. So, look, the concept here is pretty simple. Over eight episodes, it's just Jay and Ruben sitting in the middle of an empty, lavish hall in Paris, playing and then picking apart tracks like Meet the Parents and Can I Live? And it's shot in black and white by the great cinematographer Bradford Young, who worked on the movies Arrival and Selma. Jay-Z is a producer on this project, as is Rick Rubin and Daniel Kaluuya. So essentially, this is like old school rap genius annotations or a collegiate English masterclass, but make it high art. Speaker 5 (1:47) Right. Speaker 1 (1:47) Right, right. Speaker 5 (1:48) I mean, I feel like it's many things. I'm not entirely sure that I feel like it's a documentary, though, which is kind Speaker 1 (1:54) of my sticky Speaker 5 (1:55) point on how it's been packaged, you know? Speaker 1 (1:57) That is absolutely fair. I think we can kind of debate those merits. Absolutely. But yeah, Jay-Z and 8 is airing on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. And so Shamira, I guess let's just get into it. Like, who do you think this was meant for? And generally speaking, do you think it's doing what it set out to do? As I've already kind of asked, I'm curious what you're thinking is on that front. Well, Speaker 5 (2:19) I think that's my ultimate question, Speaker 2 (2:20) right? I don't know what it sets out to do. I don't know if it sets out to provide. novel insight into Jay-Z's lyricism, which is a project he's done repeatedly over the years, starting probably with the early 2010s with Decoded, which he worked on directly with Dreamhampton as a book. Or if it's supposed to provide novel insight into his life, which there are glimpses of Jay-Z's life, but there aren't really extensive swatches of novel insight that the average superfan wouldn't. already know, unless you're really curious to know how he feels about the Tupac Biggie beef, in which case, then you Speaker 5 (2:55) will find out plenty, I guess, right? You know? Sure, sure. This Speaker 4 (2:58) was the record that made Tupac and I have a little bit of a problem. It's just because him and Big and I was next to Big and things. But on his song, when he ends it, I'm warning you, the next thing he said, I'm warning you, was most hated in California. I was like, nah, nah, nah, nah. He's taking that out. I don't want to be a part of that. Speaker 2 (3:18) I think it's like a remarkable testament to like the desire of someone as large as Jay-Z to feel the need to cement and establish his legacy, but also rub up against his inclination to have as much control as possible over his narrative and the myth of his rise as possible. Right. It leaves you with like this tension of like, well. You want me to celebrate you, but you want to control what I know about you to celebrate and also resist any interrogation, right? He bristles against the idea that we have a right to challenge him on his perceptions of things, right? Right. And so we really get like a really lovely exhibit with a fascinating sound system. And I really enjoyed listening to the crisp audio. I don't know if I came away feeling like... I had a new perspective on Jay-Z. Granted, I grew up in New York, so I've been exposed to Jay-Z for the last three decades, right? But I don't know if I really felt like I came away with something novel or insightful, except for maybe some resolution of like longstanding lyrical debates that we've had. Speaker 1 (4:16) Yeah, I mean, I would count myself as a very casual Jay-Z fan. Like I was a suburban kid whose parents... would only let like the closest I could get to buying a rap album when I was, you know, 10, 11, 12 was Will Smith, Big Willie Style and Millennium. And so like my exposure to Jay-Z was like purely through radio and MTV at the time. Big Pimpin', Can I Get A, like that was like kind of what I knew. And as I've grown older, obviously I followed him through his proximity to Beyonce and also his bigger songs that he's done with collaborations with other artists. So I'm a very casual fan. And yet I feel the same way, which is like, I don't feel like I learned anything new that I didn't already know about him, you know? Like, this is the type of thing where I think the hardcore Jay-Z fans who, I hate to say it, who are not very critical about him as an artist or as a figure in the public square will probably gobble this up. I think some people who hold on tightly to this idea of preserving hip-hop and preserving the artistry of hip-hop will find things to like about this because... We'd say what you will about him. I think that he is kind of one of those people who still stands in for a certain idea of what hip hop used to be. And so hearing him dissect lyrics and paying so much attention to lyrics when we've kind of moved away from that as a culture where lyrics are less important, generally speaking, in hip hop, or some people would argue that they are less important depending on the biggest mainstream artists that you're talking about. I totally see why this would be attractive to them. Like, there's a moment in the first episode where he and Rick Rubin are chatting. And at one point he says, like, oh, we'll get to that later. Like, just as an aside. And Speaker 4 (6:00) my grandfather had his demons. You know, he had a bunch of demons. He got his, um... You know, we'll get into that. Speaker 1 (6:08) And I was like, oh, this is very planned. Like, you can tell the way that Rick Rubin, Rick Rubin also directed. He's not just a producer, but he also directed this series. I just found it so calculated and sterile. Yeah. There was no meatiness. Like, yes, you can dissect it line by line and you feel as though maybe you're getting something. But I didn't feel like I was actually getting much out of it. You know, Speaker 5 (6:32) what's so fascinating to me is despite how curated it was, it felt like it just surprisingly lacked structure. Like, I was really trying to figure out what the connecting threads were between the selection of songs or even the direction of questioning. It wasn't like the songs were grouped by album, right? No, no. In some ways, I guess,