Shawn Corey Carter

You may not know the name, but unless you’ve actively been avoiding all contact with the media and pop culture, you’ve doubtless heard his stage name: “Jay-Z” either from his record-breaking albums or his marriage to another influential musician, Beyoncé. Jay-Z has emerged as a hip-hop force to be reckoned with. His current net worth is slightly north of $900 million, but his origins are very much humbler and more unpretentious.

If you’ve heard the Billy Joel song “You May Be Right (I May Be Crazy),” one of the lines is “I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone,” as one of the “crazy” things he’d done. It was this neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, NY, that saw the birthplace of Shawn Carter.

Life was hard from the start for the young singer. His mother raised him and his three siblings after his father walked out on them when Shawn was small. His home life was so rough that by the age of 12, Shawn claims he’d shot his brother in the shoulder for trying to steal his jewelry.

He attended school with such future luminaries as Notorious B.I.G., Busta Rhymes, and AZ.

Shawn Carter is an example of someone who started on the wrong side of the tracks and was making all the wrong choices. To help make ends meet, he sold crack on the side, likely responsible for him being shot three times. If he hadn’t had a passion for music, his story would have probably ended there, with him eventually winding up dead, like so many other kids who took the wrong path before him. 

But in the late 80s, early 90s, he was able to back up Jaz-O and Big Daddy Kane. Seeing a need to get out of the life he was in and desperate to connect with the world through his music, he recorded his CD. But he was unable to find a recording label to express any interest in him. Being in a violent neighborhood, unable to pursue his passion, Shawn took matters into his own hands, finding a solution on his own when none came to him.

He began selling CDs out of the trunk of his car. When no label wanted him, he created his own, Rock-A-Fella records. He then sought a distributor, signing with Priority. In 1996, he released his first CD Reasonable Doubt, and it flew to #23 on the Billboard top 200, eventually reaching platinum.

That success led to signing a deal with Def Jam. That next year, his upcoming album My Lifetime Vol. 1 was released. Though it sold better than his previous effort, he wrote it at what he later called “the worst time of [his] life,” during the mourning period for the loss of his childhood friend Notorious B.I.G. Contained in the lyrics, Jay-Z spelled out his early years and the difficulties he faced and overcame on his way to stardom.

Jay-Z found a passion for music and used that passion for raising himself out of a life of violence and crime. When stopped along the way, he found a way to keep going. When he hit a dead end, he created his solution.

Jay-Z is proof positive that you don't have to start with a silver spoon in your mouth to make it big. Even if you've made bad choices in the past, that doesn't mean you can't start making some right decisions now and in the future. You can succeed despite what may seem some terrible and very long odds.

Most of all, his story is a lesson in thinking outside the box. When one path turned out to lead nowhere, he forged his own, until he got where he wanted to go.

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