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— Shaheem Reid
"Don't waste my mutha----in' time!" Jay-Z yells with a half-smile on his face. While countless millions have rocked to the Brooklyn wordsmith's rhymes, it's extremely rare for him to let anyone watch those rhymes being created. Today's session — at New York's Baseline Studios, the place where so many of Jay's records have been made — is an exception. And we've picked a good time, because it's going to be a long one.
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Tune into MTV2 at 9 p.m. on Nov. 2 for the premiere of "Jay-Z: Fade to Black," a special about Jay’s 2003 farewell concert. A special about the making of the film "Fade to Black" follows at 10 p.m.
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At this moment, Jay needs a little prodding. He's looking for just the right sound to send sparks to his brain and ignite the words that will eventually incite millions to move. The search has been exhaustive. He sits down at the board with his right-hand man, his longtime engineer Young Guru, and listens.
There's a beat with a sped-up soul sample that gets a disappointed smirk from Jay. There's a very basic track with synthesizer and bass that gets a little head nod from him. Another beat is so melancholy that Jay jokes, "That n---a is depressed. He gotta get out the basement."
After awhile, Jay is visibly tired. He has his head down, he's rubbing his eyes, but still he presses on, pulling together all his "patience" and "persistence."
"It's not easy, bruh," he tells Guru. "You go through a lot of bullsh-- till you get the jewels."
Just as Jay laments, he hears what's he's been waiting for.
A voice is coming from the speakers saying, "Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?"
As Guru is about to turn the beat off, Jay instructs him to let it ride. Hov pulls his chair closer up to the boards and listens more intently.
Jay begins talking, barely above a whisper. It's like he's just shut out the entire world and zeroed in on the beat. The beat finally kicks in and Jay starts mumbling even faster to himself.
He gets more inspired as the record plays. He stands, walks around the room and the process continues.
Not soon after, without a pen, paper or PC, Jay has written an entire song. It has been arranged in his head.
He's ready. Jay enters the booth, clad in a white T-shirt. "Never been a n---a this good, for this long/ Or this pop, this hot ..."
After laying down his record, Jay listens, shaking his head like saltshaker. He likes what he hears.
"Wooooooo!" he whoops while the song plays back. "It's almost time now, n---a!"
Jay's new movie, "Fade to Black," is filled with highlights from his historic farewell concert last year at New York's Madison Square Garden, where R. Kelly, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé and others helped him to set his hometown on fire. But the film's true golden nuggets show Jay like we've never seen him before: in the studio making music, like in the aforementioned scenario. Footage from the making of The Black Album shows Jay and his good friend Timbaland chilling in Miami, and Kanye West explaining his concepts for songs like he's narrating a movie. We also see Pharrell Williams so amped about giving Jay his "Carlito's Way" ending that he calls Jay on the cell and encourages him to rush to the studio ASAP.
But aside from pulling back the curtain on Jay and his famous friends as they work their magic, the movie also shows that making a song is not as simple as throwing on a beat and letting "the greatest rapper alive" wreak his harmonious chaos in the booth.
"I feel like, this being the last album, and [the fans] accompanied me on this journey, [it's nice] just to let them see how it's done," Hov said of the movie, which opens this week. "Just to give them a human side. I just wanted to give the most on this album. My first song being 'December 4th' with my mom, I just wanted to give the audience the most I could give of me on this album. And if I never, ever make another album, I've given it all and it's there. 'History shall record your greatness,' that's what they say."
Young Guru said that what you see onscreen in "Fade to Black" isn't just posturing for the camera: Jay really does take time to scrutinize every track that comes his way. "Producers mess up, they try to pigeonhole him," he said. "We did The Blueprint, then everybody tried to come with soul beats or sped-up loops. We just did that, why would you try to give us that? We're not doing the same thing over."
Guru said Jay was especially picky when making his "final" opus, The Black Album (he's since recorded another LP and attempted a world tour, both with R. Kelly). He even deviated from his original plan of using certain big-name producers when he sensed things weren't working as well as they should be.
"Jay tried to make it happen with Dr. Dre," Guru recalled. "It's not the fact that Dre didn't have a hot beat, it's Dre having a hot beat that coincides with the album that sparks something in Jay to write the way he writes [in his head]. Most of the time, he hears a beat and he'll write it right then — or at least the first verse and second verse and he'll be like, 'I'll be back tomorrow to finish the third verse.' By the time he's driven home, he already has the third verse. It has to coincide with everything we're doing. DJ Premier came to Bassline Studios and laid down some joints. It's not that Jay didn't like them, it's that whatever it was didn't spark something in him."
Besides listening to beats, Jay also gets inspiration from his everyday conversations. He may ask one of his female friends what type of shoe she would buy if he were to give her money. He'll also chitchat with the fellas for fodder.
"Nobody gives him a particular lyric, but you may be around Jay and having a normal conversation and you'll notice that the course of the conversations ends up in a rhyme in some form or fashion," Guru said. "But he says it so much fresher than any of us could ever think to say it. He makes you feel like you are in that room with us.
"I always say Jay raps on three levels," Guru continued. "A regular cat on the street can get it. I hate saying this term, but 'conscious' people, or people who have a little bit more intelligence than the average person, can get it. Then there's a level where no matter how smart you are, you'll never get it because it's personal situations where you need to be around us to get exactly what we're talking about. That's what makes him so dope."
Once Hov has his rhymes formulated, it doesn't take him long to record them. He often knocks out his verses in one take.
"What makes Jay so fast [when he records is that] he don't write his stuff down, which tremendously helps his flow because he's not reading off of paper," Guru said. "It's already written in his head with the flow of the beat every time he picks a bass line or hi-hat to flow to. Like on the original 'Hovi Baby,' he's following the hi-hat the whole first verse. Then the second verse, he's following the organ, I think. Whatever pattern the producer laid down, that's the cadence of his rhyme. He totally has the rhyme memorized before he steps in the booth. He says the whole verse maybe 10 times before he even gets in there."
Once the rhymes are recorded, they're really only partially done. The perfectionist MC asks his keep-it-real circle to help trim the fat.
"At about the 75 percent point, he'll go around the room and say, 'Which one of these verses is the wackest?' " Guru explained. " 'Let me take that out and put a new verse in.' He does that because he visited Michael Jackson and Michael Jackson said he did that for Thriller. He listens and says, 'What can I improve? The verse, the hook?' At certain points in every album I look at Jay and be like, 'You know you got 10 songs?' He'll be like, 'Word?' Then he starts formulating an order or seeing what he needs or he don't need."
Jay isn't the type to make a bunch of songs and save them for another project.
"When I make albums, they're usually tailor-made," the rapper explained. "There's a couple of [extra] songs floating out there, but for the most part, I make 14 records and those are the 14 records that come out. I'll start a record and I'll know if it's not good — I'm not like other artists that make 40 records to pick 10. I know if it's not good. If it's not good, there's no time to waste on it."
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Photo: New Line
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