My favorite rap song has long been “99 Problems,” from Jay-Z’s 2003 “Black Album.” Why? Glad you asked: I love the monster guitars, courtesy of producer Rick Rubin, that almost sound like a parody of the era’s rap-rock crossovers. I love how Jay taunts a rival who’s “loud as a motorbike, wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight.”
I love the dicey legal advice from the narration of his encounter with law enforcement, which has been debunked in dozens of term papers: In short, during a traffic stop, cops can indeed legally search your [expletive], even without a warrant.
But more than anything, I love how he torches the class-based dismissals of hip-hop, which were still common in the early 2000s. Here is that line: “Rap critics say he’s money, cash, hoes. I’m from the hood, stupid, what type of facts are those? If you grew up with holes in your zapatos, you’d celebrate the minute you was having dough.”
That’s a whole sociological theory embedded in about 35 words. Why wouldn’t rappers fixate on materialism and displays of wealth, Jay wonders, if most of them know the desperation of poverty? (“Zapatos” meaning shoes.) People covet what they don’t have, so when it arrives, they overcorrect, only to discover how empty it makes them feel. It’s the same reason lottery winners often end up broke again.
Jay-Z, of course, did not. His journey from street hustler to hitmaker to billionaire mogul and elder statesman is a well-chronicled Horatio Alger story. Nor is he hurting for recognition, having recently appeared on the New York Times’ list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, and now touring stadiums for the 30th anniversary of his 1996 debut album, “Reasonable Doubt.”
Still, even as a longtime fan, I approached the new HBO Max docuseries “Jay-Z in 8” with skepticism. How does a show that consists entirely of one-on-one conversations between Jay and Rubin justify eight episodes of 40-60 minutes? How would this be any different than streaming a podcast on Youtube while folding laundry?
Maybe it’s not, but within minutes I was sucked in. Yes, it’s two guys talking, but what a pair of dudes. It’s directed by Rubin, who cofounded Def Jam Recordings in the 1980s and produced several essential early hip-hop albums. He’s also aged into a near-mystical figure, whose 2023 book, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being,” has become totemic.
“Jay-Z in 8” (stylized with the 8 flipped on its side to imply infinity), is shot in black-and-white in a cavernous Parisian gallery space, in a format almost identical to that of “McCartney 3, 2, 1,” a 2021 series featuring Rubin in conversation with Paul McCartney.
Rubin plays hits and deep cuts from Jay’s catalog, guiding a freewheeling discussion of his craft, his art and some (but by no means all) of the uncomfortable chapters of the rapper’s biography.
For fans of Jay and rap in general, it’s a feast. He illuminates the misunderstandings that created the East coast/West coast hip-hop feud of the 1990s and his complex relationships with the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Tupac and other key figures of the era.
But “Jay-Z in 8” is not a conventional documentary. When they listen to tracks, they aren’t even identified by title or album. It’s disorienting, but maybe that’s the point — keeping the conversation as unstructured as Jay’s famously improvisational songwriting style leaves the door open for digression and depth.
For instance, he explores the emotional void created by his absent father and how it left him unequipped for relationships, following that thread to his own failures as a husband, as chronicled on his wife Beyonce’s 2016 album “Lemonade” and his own vulnerable companion piece, “4:44.” (“Progress has been made” regarding his infidelity, he says, without elaborating.)
More than any biographical bullet point, though, the real subject of the series, as implied by the title’s “infinity” allusion, is time: How, as we age, we learn from failures and heartbreaks and, if we’re lucky, end up with a whole different set of 99 problems to navigate.