Carter is being swallowed by the mob. It's late summer at the Magic apparel show in Las Vegas, and he's decided to take a stroll around the convention floor. On hand to promote Rocawear, the clothing company he co-founded, he also wants to assess the wares of his competitors. But it’s easier said than done. Fans and photographers are swarming around, and it is only with the help of bodyguards that he makes his way from booth to booth.

It's the kind of life to which he's become accustomed. In his suite at the MGM Grand, the scene is like an episode of MTV's 'Cribs.' Wearing a white tracksuit, aviator sunglasses, and a carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing diamond pinkie ring, he's attended by 12 people arrayed around a pool table. After winning in almost consecutive shots, as he gathers the balls, he addresses the group, rack in hand. "You rack on this side?" he asks. It's the perfect rock star question -- honest, unironic, hilarious. "He doesn't rack much," one of his entourage says.

That night Carter and crew visit the Palms Casino Hotel, where Russell Simmons is hosting a party for the Phat Farm clothing line. As Carter squeezes his way toward the VIP area, there’s a flash of movement -- a body flying or lunging, it’s hard to tell -- and a scuffle breaks out, followed by broken bottles and down-to-the-ground tussling. Apparently, someone didn’t want Jay-Z there. Carter's troupe makes a quick exit. "If he's going to be a real businessman," one of Carter’s longtime bodyguards says later that evening, "at some point he's going to have to leave this rap stuff behind."

Of course, it's the "rap stuff" that’s made Carter a star. Born in Brooklyn's infamous Marcy Projects, he grew up with the usual inner-city scourges, surrounded by guns, drugs, and violence. His parents provided a buffer until his father left when he was 12, and he began drifting into trouble. For six years, until age 22, he dealt crack in Brooklyn. "It was the shortest period of my life,” he says now, "but it’s the most talked-about."

Music saved him. Twelve crates full of records, his family's homemade entertainment center, taught him to love the art. As a teenager he took up rapping on street corners, filling entire notebooks with lyrics and reading the dictionary to create new rhymes. After almost getting shot turned him away from the drug trade, he and friends Damon Dash and Kareem "Biggs" Burke decided to start a record label, which they named Roc-A-Fella. Their main asset was Carter's alter ego, Jay-Z.

In 1995 Carter and his partners took their first single to Def Jam, which by then was the foremost rap label, having launched stars like LL Cool J, Public Enemy, and the Beastie Boys. The Roc-A-Fella crew brought along a demo tape—and a bag filled with cash. "They came in and said, 'All we want you to do is get our record played,'" recalls Kevin Liles, then Def Jam’s head of promotions and now executive vice-president of Warner Music Group. "I said, 'Why don't you sign with us?' And they said, 'No, we have our own company.'" Liles declined their cash, but agreed to promote the song. Jay-Z's first album, 'Reasonable Doubt,' released the next year, rose to No. 23 on the Billboard 200.

Liles and his boss, Lyor Cohen, knew they had a hot property on their hands, and in 1997 convinced Roc-A-Fella to sell Def Jam a 50 percent stake for $1.5 million. It was a windfall for Carter and his partners -- and a great deal for Def Jam. Carter released two more albums in the next two years, and by the end of 1998, with 7.8 million albums sold, he’d attained celebrity status. He went on tour the next year to 52 cities and sold out everywhere. He has since issued ten more albums, hitting the top of the charts 13 times, winning four Grammys. He also ratcheted up his business endeavors: recruiting new talent to the Roc-A-Fella label, launching the Rocawear clothing line with Dash, and, in 2002, inking a deal with Reebok for the first-ever signature sneaker line with a nonathlete. Carter's wealth swelled. Last year he bought a minority stake in the New Jersey Nets, who'd announced plans to move to his hometown of Brooklyn.

Meanwhile Carter was growing up. The kid who’d appeared in his first music videos in street gear—and who got arrested in 1999 for stabbing a rival producer (he pled guilty and received three years probation)—could now be found wearing cuff links and real suits. Carter's lyrics touted his businesses -- he rapped about the "S Dots on my feet," referring to Reebok's S.Carter line -- and the more records he sold, the more his business empire expanded. And then he retired.

Antonio "LA" Reid sits in his ivory-carpeted office, hands folded on his gray-suited knee. A vanilla-scented candle burns at one end of his huge mahogany desk, the light playing off the green-tinged frames of his square spectacles and matching pocket square. This is the man who opened the door to the corner office for Carter.

Reid, chairman of Island Def Jam Music Group, which controls Def Jam and is in turn owned by Universal Music Group, came to his post last year, after his predecessor jumped ship to Warner Music Group. Word in the industry was that Jay-Z and other Roc- A-Fella artists would follow. But Reid had other ideas. "Jay being the biggest, most successful, most influential artist on the roster, it became a priority of mine to develop a relationship," Reid says. He offered something different: Def Jam itself. Carter, surprised but enticed, signed on as president and CEO. In 2001, Def Jam had ponied up $20 million for the right to distribute Roc-A-Fella talent. Now Reid rallied another $10 million to buy the half of Roc-A-Fella that Def Jam didn't already own. What's more, Reid gave Carter the rights to the masters of all his recordings. In a matter of days Reid not only wrapped up Jay-Z's future for Def Jam, but insured that a list of promising talent, including Kanye West, would stay at home.

Back | Next