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Jay-Z's father, Adnis Reeves, left when he was 12. His mother, Gloria Carter, worked as a clerk in an investment company. He grew up in the well-known Marcy Projects, where the J and Z subway trains run. Jay-Z was born Shawn Carter on December 4, 1970, in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of four children. However, for a man who grew up on the mean streets of Brooklyn this was just another one of the hard knocks that has formed his voice in rap.
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Carter, was due to be released right after Christmas and it was uncertain whether the negative publicity from this latest incident would hurt sales. His much-awaited album, Volume 3: The Life and Times of S. The timing of Jay-Z's arrest in early December of 1999 for the stabbing of record executive Lance "Un" Rivera at a Times Square nightclub could not have been worse. When he could not get a record deal, Jay-Z, along with two friends, formed his own record label. The way, however, was not easy and Jay-Z encountered more hard knocks along the road. The money that came with a successful rap career would took him out of the Brooklyn projects, and rap music gave him a means to express his feelings about knocks and blows he has taken. For Jay-Z, rap was his way out of the hard knock life. Known for his honesty, Jay-Z has admitted in both his autobiographical lyrics and interviews that he sold drugs as a teenager. "That's the ghetto anthem." The rap star grew up in a single-parent household in the Marcy Projects of Brooklyn, New York. "These kids sing about the hard knock life, things everyone in the ghetto feels coming up," Jay-Z said of the orphans in Annie in a People feature. In his hit single "Hard Knock Life," Jay-Z samples the musical Annie's signature song of the same name. Jay-Z is all too familiar with the hard knock life. Born Shawn Corey Carter on December 4, 1970, in Brooklyn, NY son of Gloria Carter and Adnis Reeves.