Jay Z Interview: Motivation for Success!

He's an American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur.

He is a very successful hip-hop artist. He's worth $550 million. He's Jay-Z, and here are his top 10 rules for success.

My advice is just do things that are true to you. You know, most things that I'm involved with are extension of being creative. You know, Roc-A-Wear is a clothing company. Part of who you are in hip-hop is your attitude and what you're trying to express, how you dress. You know, I loved sports growing up. I grew up in a household where sports was on 24/7. So these are all things that are, you know, are comfortable for me. You know, these are things that I like. So I would just say get involved in things that you love and also have, you know, have a standard for yourself and have some sort of integrity and try to you know, find some sort of truth in what you're doing. I think again, again, it goes back to a bit of what Warren was saying as well. Like, it's the discipline as well. The discipline to not get caught up in the moment. You know, music is like stocks too. You know, there's the hot thing of the moment. You know, there's this hot electro sound or the hot Auto-Tune voice or the hot whatever, whatever's new and exciting and, you know, People tend to make emotional decisions based on that. They don't stick with what they know. This is who I am. This is what I do. Then they jump on this next hot thing and it's not for you. For me, just having the discipline and having the confidence in who I am. If I go into a studio and if I find my truth of the moment, there are a number of people in the world that can relate to what I'm saying and, and it's gonna buy into what I'm doing. You know, not because it's the new thing of the moment, but because it's my genuine emotions. It's how I feel. It's how I articulate the world. And, you know, just having the discipline to just, you know, be yourself. Yeah, I'm inspired by, you know, life and all sorts of things. You can say something right now and it would inspire me to write a song or something to happen. You know, "Most Kings" just happened to be inspired by a Basquiat drawing, you know, the drawing, and he had the "Most young kings get their head cut off" on the bottom. And I looked at that and I was like, "It's powerful." You know, just the statement in itself, you know, lends itself for a song. Song starts inspired by Basquiat. My chariot's on fire. Everybody took shots, hit my body up. I'm tired. And then it's just, "They build me up to break me down, to build me up again." They like, "Hov, we need you back so we could kill your ass again." You know, it's like this thing, this love-hate thing that the world has with success, period. It's complex, right? And it's deceiving at times, you know, because people think the two equate.

Yes.

You know, to each other, and they don't.

Right?

You have a lot of money.

It's up here. And then I have a lot of happiness, but that doesn't mean that the two equate to each other.

Has your happiness risen at the same amount as your bank account?

No, that's the thing. They don't, they don't, they don't equate, or they're not tied in any way. They're not tied to each other. I mean, it allows you freedom and allows you to go places where you could smile and look at the sunset and things like that.

That's what you choose to do and you enjoy to do, right?

But there are a lot of people would tons of money who aren't happy because they're either— they become a prisoner of their money, or they become so consumed with getting money that they don't allow time for happiness, right? Life is about balance, right? You have to have some type of balance. You have like time for work and it's time for play. And if you don't allow these two things to coexist, you have an imbalance of one or the other. And I wish I could say we were geniuses and said we're going to start our own company, you know. That's not what happened. You know, in the beginning we went to every single label and every single label shut their door on us. The genius thing that we did was we didn't give up. We didn't say because these guys, you know, we used that "what do they know" approach. You know, we didn't give up at that point. I think that was the genius thing we did. We started selling our own CDs and we built our own buzz and then the record company came back to us. So now we had a different negotiation. You know, it wasn't the same artist-label relationship. Now we retain ownership in our own company, and it was the best thing for us.

Let's not get stuck on one thing. Let's, you know, rap music is about diversity. Like, if you know you got on those Nikes, I'mma just rap, you know, Dunks. And it's all about everyone's contribution. You know, you had— before you had Tribe, Ice Cube, Public Enemy at the same time as Digital Underground, which is so many different— I had every album. You know, it was all different types of sounds and approaches, but it was still great music. I'm not just, you know, Auto-Tune is bad. You know, there are songs that have Auto-Tune that I love, but when everyone jumps on this, uh, bandwagon and everyone make— tries to make the same exact record. I mean, I heard that record from T-Pain, I liked it. I don't want to hear it 100 times from 100 different artists, like, I want to hear different stuff.

Our job is to find that genius-level talent and then to apply it in a way that supports that genius-level talent. Quick example is a guy named Earl Manigault who was said to be way better than Michael Jordan, but he didn't make the league. He was selling drugs, he got caught up in drugs, his circumstances got getting in the way. So you have to define— you have to find your genius-level talent.

Then you have to believe on it.

Do you have to believe in it so hard? Because people will put their shit, their insecurities on you. Like when I was young, I went to my uncle and I had my demo tape, my first demo.

I was really happy about this shit, you know. I played it for him.

Now, you know, I was like wide-eyed. I'm like, it went off. The first thing he even said, huh? Keep up the good work.

He was like, man, you ain't gonna never be better than LL Cool J. I know he loved me.

I forgive him for it, you know, but I think that something must have happened to him when he was trying to pursue his dreams.

It didn't work out for him, so he was putting that on me. So you have to—

even people that are close to you and love you, you have to have so much belief in this genius-level talent that no matter what anyone says to you, you have to have this focus. So you have to find it.

Yes!

Then you have to believe in it. Then you can't let nobody put their insecurities and shit on you. Hell yeah! Then you have to work.

He just affirmed to me that instincts is really important in business. You know, I didn't go to any proper business school or any, uh, read any super, uh, follow any manuals like the Record Business 101 or anything like that. I just pretty much followed my instincts. And he just reaffirmed that for me, that your instincts are very important to you. I love that thing of collaborating, you taking the best of what you do and someone taking the best of what you're doing. You not robbing from what they do and they not robbing from what you do. And y'all bring the best of what you are to the table and you put it in this mix and you see what happens. I love that part of creating. So there'll definitely be 'Cause I don't believe in those lines that people put up for music. This is for this person, this is for that people, this is rock, this is blues. I just believe good music, bad music, and put those two elements in the room and see what happens. Let God, the universe, the movement, whatever happens in that room tonight, we, not we, wine, whatever happens, make great music. I started this Shawn Carter Scholarship Program, you know, noticing how education was, you know, not being addressed in our neighborhood. And also as a way to show people in our neighborhood that, you know, you can be successful and come back, that that person that used to live in 5C, 534 Flushing, is not a person in a box now, you know, not someone you just see at concert or see on TV. You know, most people that were successful growing up from where I was from never came back, so there was never dialogue on how'd you do it, what happened. There was no mentoring program there. There was no going back and grabbing a person and teaching them a trade or what it is that you do, and then that person go back and grab two people and then, you know, and then It goes from there. So I figured I'd start with school because, you know, education, you know.

It's the answer.

It's the answer.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because a bunch of you were asking for it. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of Jay-Z's top 10 rules most resonated with you. Leave it in the comments. I'm gonna join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.