Jay-Z is giving credit where it is due.
In a newly surfaced clip from the special Jay-Z and Gayle King: Brooklyn’s Own, the rapper opens about the teacher that had impacted his life as a child. “So Ms. Loudon was my sixth grade teacher,” he recalled. “In the sixth grade, I was reading on a 12-grade level. … And that excited me because everyone was excited. And Ms. Loudon, she was excited. I remember the feeling of it felt like me riding my bike at four, the way people reacted to that.”
The full special can be streamed on Paramount+ and fans will learn things about the famed rapper that they may have never known before. Through their conversations, Jay has explained why he hasn’t been back in the studio creating music and the one thing that will get him back to make new music.
“I have to be saying something important,” he said. “It has to mean something, you know? It has to mean something to a larger society.” Jay-Z released his last solo album 4:44 in 2017.