Exhibition Label

Jay-Z is a rapper, writer, producer, and entrepreneur whose life reflects the rise of hip-hop to the epicenter of global popular culture. Raised in a Brooklyn housing project, Shawn Carter was at first called "Jazzy," and it morphed into Jay-Z. Like a jazz musician, he improvises all his raps when recording, and his strength is his flow—his fast, smooth wordplay and flow of ideas. Carter's stage persona as Jay-Z mixes his past as a drug dealer from the ’hood—"Bed-Stuy was my country / Brooklyn my planet," he raps—with the swagger of a Rockefeller (his clothing line is called Roc-a-Fella). He represents a millennial synthesis of American culture’s love of outlaws, who live in opposition to social approval, with its love of extreme wealth, which insulates a person from everyday pressures. What happens when an inner-city party music and political forum becomes the soundtrack of global capitalism? Jay-Z’s "Hard Knock Life" is the "ghetto anthem" of these ironies.

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Bill and Sally Wittliff

Restrictions & Rights

© Dan Winters Photography

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National Portrait Gallery Collection

2003 (printed 2010)

Object number

NPG.2010.40

Culture

Shawn Corey Carter: American\African American

Artist

Dan Winters, born 1962

Sitter

Shawn Corey Carter, born 4 Dec 1969

Topic

Costume\Headgear\Hat

Shawn Corey Carter: Male

Shawn Corey Carter: Business and Finance\Businessperson\Executive\Motion Pictures

Shawn Corey Carter: Business and Finance\Businessperson\Entrepreneur\Music

Shawn Corey Carter: Performing Arts\Performer\Musician\Singer\Rap

Portrait

Medium

Digital pigment print

Dimensions

Image: 45 x 34.8 cm (17 11/16 x 13 11/16")

Sheet: 50.9 x 40.7 cm (20 1/16 x 16")

Mat: 71.1 x 55.9 cm (28 x 22")

National Portrait Gallery

Type

Photograph