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Carter's office is on the same floor as Reid’s. Aside from a Japanese MTV video music award (for his collaboration with rock band Linkin Park), it is standard corporate fare. If Carter's new job is an experiment, then this 200-square-foot space is the laboratory. Industry critics have questioned whether Carter has the experience, the temperament, or the talent to run Def Jam's business. "People were worried about all sorts of things,” notes one insider, "from whether he’d be able to pick artists—because being an artist doesn’t mean you can pick other artists -- to whether he’d do any work at all."

Carter admits that, in taking the post, he didn't think much about what it would mean in real terms. "I'd never had a job," he allows. But he's also being coy. As Def Jam's David Miller, director of international marketing, puts it, "There are executive decisions to make, meetings to sit in, HR issues that I’m sure Jay never experienced before. But are you telling me in putting Roc-A-Fella together, Jay never had to deal with HR or admin services or budgets? Of course he has."

Reid points to a single example to explain why he believes in Carter as a music executive: “Kanye West has this amazing song on his album Late Registration called 'Hey Mama,'" Reid says. “But he actually recorded it for his first album, College Dropout, and Jay told him, 'Hold it. Let's wait till you get bigger and then put the song on your next album.' That was a genius thing. When I asked Jay about it, he said, 'Well, [Kanye] had four or five gems on the album. He didn't need this one.’ He surprises me every day."

Carter is running a meeting in London, and it isn't going well. It's September, and he's in the midst of his first presentation to Def Jam’s international marketing team. In theory he's here to get them pumped about Def Jam's future under his leadership. But when he cues up a new track from singer Ne-Yo, a somewhat confused voice says, "That one's doing great in France." Carter is caught by surprise: "You guys heard that already?” It is the same with the next song. Many tracks circulate underground in European clubs before release, and the new boss learns the hard way -- the embarrassing way -- that his selections have already made the rounds.

But the Jay-Z part of his personality saves the meeting. He plays something they haven't seen: the video for a new single, "No Daddy," by Teairra Marí, an artist he signed. When the thumping beat subsides, Jay the performer steps in. "You can clap, you know," he says, beaming with his arms spread wide. Laughter ripples through the room.

That afternoon Carter meets Teairra at the London studios of MTV’s Total Request Live. They’re premiering her video, and he’s there to introduce it. "I care about her as a person," he says as the camera rolls, “so I give her life advice.” That kind of attention from a superstar is alluring to artists, and Teairra is just one act that Carter has attracted this way. He’s also appeared on remixes for many Def Jam artists -- including Kanye West -- helping boost sales of their records.

Still, Carter can be tentative as a corporate player. He sheepishly describes arriving for a meeting with Nets majority owner Bruce Ratner in a beat-up taxi. He wonders what Ratner must have thought of him that day. But to Ratner, the method of Carter's conveyance left no impression. "The intent was, Here’s a celeb that’ll help the branding of the team," Ratner says. "As it’s evolved, he's become one of the key investors, not just in terms of promotion, but for his real business judgment.” Carter's business acumen, it turns out, may be more evolved than his confidence in it.

Being a CEOsometimes isn't enough for Carter. The same day as the London marketing meeting, he was honored as a fashion icon when British GQ gave him its International Man of the Year award. He also visited a potential British distribution partner for Rocawear -- which is generating some $400 million a year in sales. (Carter recently bought out co-founder Dash for an estimated $25 million.) Carter is also developing his own S. Carter high-end clothing line, and in the spring he introduced a collaboration with Swiss luxury-watch maker Audemars Piguet.

The CEO gig, in fact, is just one aspect of Carter's business aspirations. Faced with the question of where he'll be in ten years, he answers easily. "I guess [Def Jam] will have ten records on the Top 10, and I’ll walk away from here,” he says. He’s got something to prove --that his success is more than diamonds and Escalades, that he's got a brain in his head, that he can grow old gracefully -- but he doesn't want to be the next Bill Gates.

Under Carter, Def Jam has debuted four new artists, all of whom will reach gold-record status (500,000 in sales) this year. Kanye West's second album has sold 1.2 million units since its Aug. 30 release. To critics who carp that Carter's stars aren't putting up Jay-Z-type numbers, he is defiant. "I've lived with people's expectations all my life," he says. "They think, 'Okay, you’re president, someone should go platinum tomorrow,' even though there are so many people in the music business who haven’' broken one act for five years. I can't base my life on that."

What everyone wonders, of course, is whether Jay-Z will return to making records --the surest way to boost Def Jam's sales. At the London meeting, marketers perked up at talk of a greatest-hits album, though Carter shook them off. At a Rocawear party that night, Carter raps along to his own hits. He's unselfconscious, moving his hands to punctuate the beats. In the cordoned-off VIP area, he is surrounded by his entourage, while just outside the rails, partygoers scream his name. It's chaos, but he couldn't be more at home. Maybe he's wrong. Maybe a rapper can be 45 and fabulous.

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