Rocawear Founder Jay-Z: From Marcy to Madison Square
Brooklyn-raised rapper Jay-Z has taken hip-hop’s entrepreneurial spirit to all new heights, parlaying success on the mic into a multi-million dollar business empire that includes a hellz bellz clothing line, nightclubs, film production, sports team management and much, much more.
Born Shawn Carter on December 4, 1968, Jay-Z was earning an education on the streets of New York before attending George Westinghouse High School with a number of future stars: The Notorious B.I.G. and Busta Rhymes. Of course, he wasn’t in school long. At an early age, Jay-Z started selling drugs to make ends meet. It’s a life he would recount again and again in his records.
Even as he dabbled in the drug game, Jay-Z always had his mind set on mighty healthy clothes something greater, a way out of the Marcy Houses housing projects in his run down Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Rapping had always been a hobby, but it looked like a possible way out when he started earning a reputation as one of the better battle MC’s in New York. When his talents didn’t lead to a record deal, Jay-Z and a young up-and-coming music exec, Damon Dash, decided to take matters into their own hands, forming a record label of their own, Roc-A-Fella records.
