Dear VICE,
 Family has gotta be number one. I’m always happy around my family because you can be as silly as you want. Y’know what I’m saying? You don’t have to worry about the way that people perceive you. It’s just you with your guard down. Anytime you around family it’s cool. Other people, with their codes and their sayings and their intentions… you don’t know what they want. With family, it’s such a relaxing feeling. You can take it for granted. When you’re an artist, it’s very rare that you’re around people who like you genuinely. You don’t know the reason why they like you. My family is my mom, my two sisters, a brother, all my nephews, my niece Deeana. My sister is Mickey, all my nephews, they don’t have individual names, they’re just known as the Carter boys, they’re just one group, the Carter boys. There’s four of them. My brother got another two. They look like me and everything. All of them are taller than me.
They come over on Saturdays and we have family breakfasts and from that we go to a bunch of competitive stuff, from pool to basketball to cards to Playstation 2. None of them can beat me. Every week they come over like, “I’m gonna beat him this weekend!” But I don’t let that happen.
My favorite game is the basketball because we go heavy with that. Football too.
I’m a sports guy. I usually just play football and basketball and baseball, but football and basketball dominate. I play with everybody.
My pop was a Dallas fan. Don’t ask me how he got to be a Dallas fan. I grew up watching Tony Dorset, Danny White. I was a big Cowboy fan. I knew why my dad liked the 76ers because of Dr. J, because he had an Afro and they used to call my dad Dr. J.
The happiest moment of last year was when my Mom retired. She used to work in investments, the city of New York, One Center Street. I don’t remember a time my mom wasn’t working. Y’know what I’m saying? Like, my ma was always working from 15, 16, 17 years old. We had a party when she retired. All the family and all the people from her job came and it was great. All her childhood friends came and they did a whole speech about what they used to do.
Drinking Boone’s Farm, sneaking off, smoking weed. She ain’t going to want me to tell you this, but I’ma tell you anyway.
I got a lot of new challenges. I’m WRITING my first album, because the first album that I write is going to be my last. I’ve never actually written down a word. I’ve been doing rap for seven years and I’ve been getting too comfortable with it. I want to have passion and fire about it. I know I have a gift. It’s not even like an accident. If I tell you what a song’s going to do, it’s usually going to do it.
JAY-Z
Rapper and hip hop mogul
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