Jay-Z

Shawn Carter grew up in the Marcy Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, one of four children. His father left the family when he was 11, and the two did not speak again until shortly before his father's death in 2003. He has said he shot his older brother in the shoulder at 12 over a stolen ring, sold crack through his teenage years, and survived being shot at three separate times. He moved between Brooklyn high schools and Trenton Central in New Jersey before dropping out in tenth grade. The name came from Jaz-O, an older rapper on the same blocks who mentored him and lent him the nickname Jay-Z.

Unable to land a record deal, he and two partners started Roc-A-Fella Records in 1995 to put out his own music, and Reasonable Doubt, released in 1996, became the founding document of a catalog that now runs to 14 number-one albums, third-most of any act in Billboard history. The Blueprint, The Black Album and Watch the Throne followed, along with a run as president of Def Jam from 2004 to 2007. He built Roc Nation into a management and label operation, took a controlling stake in the champagne brand Armand de Brignac for 200 million dollars in 2014, and bought the streaming service Tidal the following year. He holds 25 Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.

In December 1999 he was accused of stabbing a record executive, Lance Rivera, at a New York club, and pleaded guilty to third-degree assault in 2001, taking three years of probation. In 2024 a woman filed a sexual assault lawsuit naming him alongside Sean Combs. She withdrew it voluntarily, with prejudice, in February 2025, saying she still believed the allegation but feared the harassment of pursuing it further, and no settlement was disclosed. Jay-Z countersued her attorney for defamation, claiming 20 million dollars in lost contracts. A judge dismissed that suit as meritless in July 2025. The stabbing case ended in a guilty plea. The 2025 case ended without either side's account being tested in court.

He married Beyoncé Knowles in a private ceremony on April 4, 2008, and they have three children. He became hip-hop's first billionaire in 2019, and Forbes put his net worth near 2.8 billion dollars in 2026, built largely on Tidal's sale to Block and the Armand de Brignac stake. The New York Times named him among the 30 greatest living American songwriters, and he still tours and headlines festivals, including the Roots Picnic in May 2026. Whether the legal record of the past three decades settles into footnote or something heavier is not yet decided — the closed cases and the open ones sit in the same public file.

Jay-Z's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Reasonable Doubt album
  His debut, and the founding record of Roc-A-Fella 1996
• The Blueprint album
  Preserved in the National Recording Registry in 2019 2001
• The Black Album album 2003
• Roc Nation company 2008
• Tidal company
  Bought for 56 million dollars — majority stake later sold to Block 2015
• Armand de Brignac company
  200 million dollars for full ownership of the champagne brand 2014

• 1982 aged ~13 Shoots his older brother in the shoulder at 12, by his own account
• 1988 aged ~19 Drops out of high school in tenth grade After moving between Brooklyn schools and Trenton Central.
• 1995 aged ~26 Co-founds Roc-A-Fella Records with Damon Dash and Kareem Burke
• 1996 aged ~27 Releases his debut album, Reasonable Doubt
• 2001 aged ~32 Pleads guilty to assault in the Lance Rivera stabbing case
• 2004 aged ~35 Becomes president of Def Jam Recordings
• April 4, 2008 aged 38 Marries Beyoncé Knowles
• 2019 aged ~50 Becomes hip-hop's first billionaire, according to Forbes
• February 2025 aged 55 A sexual assault lawsuit naming him is voluntarily dismissed Dismissed with prejudice, no settlement disclosed.

• Beyoncé b. 1981
  Singer, songwriter, and performer whose cultural influence extends far beyond music into fashion and activism. married to
• Jack Dorsey b. 1976
  Co-founder of Twitter and Square who shaped social media and mobile payments. Block board member alongside him
• Michael Jordan b. 1963
  Widely regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time, who became a global marketing phenomenon. preceded him as a Black American billionaire
• Oprah Winfrey b. 1954
  Media executive and talk show host who built a multimedia empire and became one of the most influential women in the world. comparable path from entertainer to mogul