Tuesday, November 16th 2010

News:  Jay-Z

Jay-Z Goes Deep With Howard Stern

By Johnny Firecloud

Jay-Z did an in depth hour long interview on the Howard Stern Show yesterday to promote his new book Decoded, which hits stores today. The hour-long segment further established Howard Stern’s unparalleled ability to pull compelling & candid interviews out of his guests, delivering insight into Jay-Z’s inner workings and history most have never seen.

The two media icons dove deep in discussing Jay’s relationship with his father, defending Kanye and more, as well as his dubbing Michael Jackson’s Thriller the greatest album of all time. We also learn the true story behind the classic Hova track 99 Problems, and his inability to relate to genius musicians like Michael Jackson and Prince while growing up. In fact, he couldn’t relate to many of his musical idols until Hip-Hop entered his world.

“It brought an incredible talent closer to home,” Jay told Stern. ”It resonated closer to me, cause yeah, Michael Jackson and Prince, they were so far removed from who we were everyday and the music they were making was so difficult to make that rap brought it closer for us to tell these stories and have these emotions and speak these emotions.”

Listen to the interview:

Hova also addressed Kanye’s infamous VMA stage-crashing, which the Roc Nation founder believes “was bittersweet in a lot of ways.”

“It was not her fault. It’s not Taylor Swift’s fault,” he said. “She didn’t nominate… she didn’t elect herself. She just sat there and she had a dream and she’s seeing that dream being realized, and he had the same dream, so he realizes that now. It was bad timing, but we agreed.”

The New York Post and the Daily News have published excerts from the book, a combination of memoirs and explanations of the hip hop icon’s lyrics.