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 11 Things You Don't Know About JAY-Z on His 51st Birthday

Shawn Corey Carter, also called JAY-Z, was brought into the world 51 years back today in Brooklyn, New York. The rundown of achievements he's accomplished since his 1996 presentation discharge, Reasonable Doubt, are too long to even consider listing here. All things being equal, here are 11 generally secret realities about the persuasive rapper.

1) He made Grammy history last month. JAY-Z recently became tied for the most Grammy nominations in history with 80. He shares that distinction with legendary producer Quincy Jones. He's also married to the person who currently holds the record for second most Grammy nominations: Beyoncé's 9 nominations at the end of November put her at 79 over the course of her career.

2) His childhood friends also became stars. He attended Brooklyn's George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School with future rappers The Notorious B.I.G., DMX, and Busta Rhymes. He remained close with Biggie throughout the late rapper's life and was one of the last people to speak with him on the phone prior to the shooting that took his life in 1997.

3) He has lofty ambitions--sometimes too lofty. JAY-Z wanted to use a NASA space shuttle as a stage prop during his 2011 "Watch the Throne" tour with Kanye West. However, the plan was scrapped due to the prohibitive cost of buying and transporting it. (At 180 feet tall, the spacecraft was also too large to fit into music venues.)

4) He was a child prodigy. His sixth grade teacher, Renee Rosenblum-Lowden, told The Washington Post in 2018 that HOVA tested at a twelfth grade reading level while in the sixth grade. He has always had a knack for remembering things, as well. He supposedly never writes down his lyrics but composes and remembers them all.

5) There was fear that The Blueprint would flop. Label executives fretted over the album's release on September 11, 2001 due to the World Trade Center attacks. Instead, The Blueprint went on to sell 420,000 copies that first week and is now considering by many to be his masterpiece and one of the greatest albums of the genre.

6) He was hip-hop's first billionaire. Along with selling tons of albums and merchandise, JAY-Z has always made wise investments, including owning a share of Uber and a stake in the Brooklyn Nets basketball team as well as in the streaming service Tidal. (On the eve of his birthday, he released his latest year-end playlist on the service.) Kanye recently joined him on the billionaire list with a wealth that may edge out his former mentor's thanks to his successful Yeezy clothing line.

7) He can't conclude how to compose his name. Following quite a while of proceeding as Jay-Z, he dropped the hyphen from his name in 2013. At that point four years after the fact, the hyphen returned, and he reformatted his name to be in all capital letters. The starting points of his moniker has additionally been questioned throughout the long term. He's said in meetings that it's a play on his youth moniker "Lively," but at the same time he's asserted its a tribute to his rap tutor Jaz-O. (Another mainstream hypothesis, however never confirmed by him, is that that name comes from him growing up close to the J/Z tram line in Brooklyn.) 

8) He once shot his sibling - when he was 12. Before he says he was shot multiple times himself while selling break prior to discovering achievement in music, JAY-Z—at the youthful age of 12—shot his more established sibling in the shoulder over some taken gems. His sibling, dependent on break at that point, didn't squeeze charges and later apologized while hospitalized. 

9) He bowed reality a little—alright, a ton—for an example. To clear the Annie test on his 1998 hit "Difficult existence (Ghetto Anthem)," JAY deceived the melody's arranger, Charles Strouse. The rapper erroneously disclosed to Strouse that he'd considered the to be on Broadway as a youngster and composed an opposition winning paper on it at school. 

10) He has his own shading. In 2007, JAY-Z burned through huge number of dollars for the Pantone Color Institute to make a tint only for him. Portrayed as a silvery blue with platinum dust, the shading was first presented on his own restricted release line of GM Yukon Denali soon thereafter. Blue is clearly a shading that implies a ton to him (girl Blue Ivy, The Blueprint and so on)

11) He may have bought Beyoncé a dragon egg. Actress Emilia Clarke, who portrayed "Queen of Dragons" Daenerys Targaryen on HBO's Game of Thrones, was talking with Harper's Bazaar in 2015 about the show's richly-detailed faux dragon eggs when she revealed this interesting tidbit: "I tried unsuccessfully to steal one of the egg props for myself, but apparently JAY-Z bought one for Beyoncé. I don't know."