JAY-Z Speaks On Being First Rapper In Songwriter Hall Of Fame

During his recent interview with Gayle King, JAY-Z reflected on both the positive and negative aspects of being the first rapper to be enshrined in the Songwriter Hall of Fame. “For a while, they would just dismiss rap as this fad or this noise [with] people just screaming over beats. Not that we needed the validation, but it was like we want the validation ’cause we deserve it,” he explained. Hov was elected to the Hall back in 2017. He has since been joined by Jermaine Dupri (2018), Missy Elliot (2019), Pharrell (2022), and Snoop (2023).

However, the Hall of Fame wasn’t the only thing that he and King talked about. Jigga also recalled how Chris Martin of Coldplay convinced him to headline Glastonbury in 2018. “At one point, I was like why am I going there. If they don’t want me there, I don’t want to go. And Chris from Coldplay was instrumental on [convincing me to play]. He was like, ‘Jay, they love you. It’s just the old guard, they don’t know. It’s always been a rock festival.’ They didn’t have anything against me personally, it was just like, this is a rock festival, this is what it is. The world was changing,” he recalled. JAY-Z’s inclusion in the 2018 lineup garnered a lot of backlash from the more traditional Glastonbury crowd of rock musicians. In one notable example, Hov learned to play Oasis’ “Wonderwall” on the guitar and played it for the crowd after Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher was especially vocal in his opposition.

JAY-Z Surprises Fans With His Pick For His Most Important Album

Hov has been doing a lot of interviews recently, which has led to a lot of surprising revelations. For example, JAY-Z recently revealed that he believes his most important to album to be Vol 2…Hard Knock Life. “This is the album that’s the most important album because it was the album where I honed my craft as a songwriter and that balance of creating exactly what I want. And just as a writer, a technical song-maker. Song-making skills with real stories is when it all came together on this album,” he explained.

Elsewhere, he also explained what it would take for him to make new music. “I’ll say I wanna make music, but it has to be something important. I don’t wanna just make a bunch of tunes. That’s not gonna serve me. It won’t feed me, first of all. I have to be saying something important. It has to mean something, you know? It has to mean something to a larger society,” he explained.

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