Jay-Z So '80s

Who’s that fresh-faced kid in the goofy tucked-in t-shirt and the flat top?  Why, it’s 1989 Jay-Z, appearing here on “The Originators” with his mentor Jaz.  Let the kid’s show colors and Cold War flow take you back to a simpler time in rap (“stumblin’ bumblin’!”).  Jay looks a little nervous in his first music video, but hey, the guy’s like 20 here.  Though Biggie wrote Ready to Die at 21 and Nas did Illmatic at around 19, so it’s not a complete excuse.  But I think this track sort of explains why Jay didn’t hit his stride until a little later in life: the clothes, the cadence, the cheesiness of this kind of 1989 rap were all wrong for him.  The breathy hustler mogul delivery and swagger he owned so well only made sense in rap’s flush late ’90s, by which time the genre had both gotten hard and gone big.

And what of the Jaz?  Well, anytime he came near the light after the early ’90s was when Jay deigned to recognize his mentor’s plaintive attempts to kindle a feud.  Jaz even helped Nas with “Ether,” the infamous anti-Jay diss track.  A little career envy there, I spy.

Via Dan, who is writing a diss track against Nancy Grace.