- He's an American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur.
- He is a very successful hip hop artist.
- He is worth 550 billion dollars.
- He's Jay Z and here are his top ten rules for success.
- My advice is just do things that are true to you.
Most of the things that I'm involved with are an extension of being creative.
Rocawear is a clothing company.
It's part of who you are and hip hop is your attitude and what you're trying to express,
how you dress.
I loved sports growing up.
I grew up in a household where sports was on 24/7 so these are all things that are comfortable
for me.
These are things that I like.
So I would just say get involved in things that you love and also have a standard for
yourself and have some sort of integrity and try to find some sort of truth in what you're
doing.
I think again it goes back to a bit of what Warren was saying as well, it's the discipline.
The discipline to not get caught up in the moment.
You know music is like stocks too.
There's the hot thing of the moment.
There's this hot electro sound or the hot auto-tune voice or the hot whatever, whatever's
new and exciting.
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, and then they jump on this next hot thing and it's
not for you.
So for me, just having the discipline and having the confidence in who I am and 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 that's going to buy into what I'm doing.
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, just having the discipline to just
be yourself.
Yeah, I'm inspired by 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.
Most Kings just happened to be inspired by a Basquiat drawing, you know the drawing he
had that "most young kings get their head cut off" on the bottom.
I looked at that and I was like "It's powerful", just the statement in itself lends itself
for a song.
The song starts, "Inspired by Basquiat, "my chariot's on fire, everybody took shots, "hit
my body up, I'm tired, "build me up, break me down to build me up again.
"They like, Hov, we need you back so we can "kill your ass again."
It's like this thing, this love-hate thing that the world has with success period.
It's complex, right, and it's deceiving--
- [Interviewer] Hm.
- at times, you know, because people think the two equate.
- [Interviewer] Yes.
- You know, to each other and they don't.
- [Interviewer] Give a lot of money.
- It's upyeah.
- And then--
- That have a lot of happiness but that doesn't mean that the two equate to each other.
- [Interviewer] Has your happiness risen at the same amount as your bank account?
- No, that's the thing.
They don't--
- [Interviewer] They don't equate or--
- No.
- [Interviewer] they're not tied in any way important.
- They're not tied to each other.
- [Interviewer] Why?
- I mean it allows you freedom and it allows you to go places where you can smile and look
at the sunset and things like that if that's what you choose to do and you enjoy to do.
- [Interviewer] Right.
- But there are a lot of people with tons of money who are unhappy because either they've
become a prisoner of their money--
- [Interviewer] Right.
- Or they have become so consumed with getting money that they don't allow time for happiness.
- [Interviewer] Right.
- Life is about balance, right?
You have to have some type of balance.
You have to, like, time for work and there's time for play and if you don't allow these
two things to co-exist, you have an imbalance of one or the other.
I wish I could say we were geniuses and say we're going to start our own company.
That's not what happened.
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, we used that what do they know approach.
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.
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.
You know rap music is about diversity, like if you got on those Nikes I'm just going to
write, you know, dunks.
It's all about everyone contribution.
Before you had Tribe, Ice Cube, Public Enemy.
At the same time there's Digital Underground.
There was just so many different, and I had every album.
- [Interviewer] Um-hmm.
- It was all different types of sounds and approaches but it was still great music.
I'm not just auto-tune is bad, you know.
There are songs that have auto-tune that I love.
But when everyone jumps on this bandwagon and everyone 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 a hundred times from a hundred different artists.
I want to hear different stuff.
Our job is to find that genius-level talent and then to apply it in the way that supports
that genius-level talent.
A 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 in the way.
So you have to find your genius-level talent.
Then you have to believe in it so hard because people will put their shit and their insecurities
on you.
- And when I was young I went to my uncle and had my demo tape, my first demo.
I was really happy about the shit.
I played it for him.
I was like wide-eyed.
It went off, the first thing he didn't say keep up the good work.
He was like man, you ain't going to never be better than LL Cool J. Now I know you love
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 and it didn't work out for him so he was putting
that on me.
So you have to even with people that are close to you and love you, you have to still 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.
And you have to believe in it.
You can't let nobody put their insecurities and shit on you.
He just affirmed to me that instincts is really important in business.
I didn't go to any proper business school or read any super, 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 do and you not robbing from what they do and they aren't robbing
from what you do.
You 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, I don't believe in those lines that people
put up for music, you know, this is for this person, this is for that, 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 and the universe, the movement, whatever happens in that room, we, not we, I. Whatever
happens, make great music.
When I started this Shawn Carter Scholarship Program, noticing how education was not being
addressed in our neighborhood and also as a way to show people in our neighborhood that
you can be successful and come back, that that person that use to live in 5C at 534
Flushing is not a person in a box now, not someone you just see at a concert or see on
TV.
Most people that were successful growing up from where I was from never came back.
So there was never a dialogue on how'd you do it, what happened.
There was no mentoring program.
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.
It goes from there.
So I figured I'd start with school because education--
- [Interviewer] 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 ten rules most resonated with you.
Leave it in the comments.
I'm going to join in the discussion.
Thank you so much for watching.
Continue to believe and I'll see you soon.