Jay-Z
Pop Culture Happy Hour

Jay-Z

B2Upper-intermediateSeptember 24, 202626 min
  • Interview

Jay-Z has been everywhere lately. It’s been 30 years since his acclaimed debut Reasonable Doubt, and he celebrated with a series of concerts at Yankee Stadium. And now there’s the HBO docuseries, JAŸ-Z In 8, in which Jay-Z dissects his catalog with producer Rick Rubin. The series hopes to further cement his legacy as one of the most revered lyricists of our time. But Jay-Z (or JAŸ-Z, as he’s styled it lately.) has always been a polarizing figure, both in his personal life and as a business mogul. So what does this series accomplish? Looking for more...

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And now this.

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the storied producer Rick Rubin.

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B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 28%A2 29%B1 20%B2 18%C1 6%
  • 76% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 190 words a minute: natural, fairly fast speech.
  • 170 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

Transcript

The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.

0:00

So you may have noticed Jay-Z's been everywhere lately. It's been 30 years since his acclaimed debut, Reasonable Doubt. And to celebrate, he put on a series of sold out star studded concerts at Yankee Stadium, made a big show of cutting off his famous locks.

0:19

And now this. Jay-Z, an 8, an HBO docuseries where hove dissects song lyrics across his catalog with the storied producer Rick Rubin. The obvious play here is to further cement his legacy as one of the most revered lyricists

0:32

of our time. But J.Z. has always been this kind of polarizing figure when it comes to how he's moved as a business mogul and in his personal life.

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