Jay Z opened up about his past as a drug dealer in New York, as well as his daughter with wife Beyonce, Blue Ivy in a new interview with Vanity Fair.
The Magna Carta Holy Grail rapper was candid in talking about the availability of crack in his neighborhood growing up, saying he still thinks about it.
"There wasn’t any place you could go for isolation or a break,” he said. “You go in the hallway; [there are] crackheads in the hallway. You look out in the puddles on the curbs—crack vials are littered in the side of the curbs. You could smell it in the hallways, that putrid smell; I can’t explain it, but it’s still in my mind when I think about it.”
Now heading a multi-million dollar empire, the businessman and rapper said he learned all he knows from the streets.
“I know about budgets. I was a drug dealer. To be in a drug deal, you need to know what you can spend, what you need to re-up,” he explained, Huffington Post reports.
He also talked about his daughter, Blue, talking about recent comments Beyonce said about their daughter preferring his music to hers. While he says “that’s not true,” he also said “She plays a song and she goes, ‘More, Daddy, more . . . Daddy song.’ She’s my biggest fan.”
"If no one bought the Magna Carta [album], the fact that she loves it so much, it gives me the greatest joy. And that’s not like a cliché," he added.
image: Vanity Fair