Since 9th Wonder dropped the Jay-Z – Black American Gangster Mixtape, this week I thought we should take a look further back into Jay-Z‘s career.
“In My Lifetime” is the debut single from Jay-Z‘s now legendary career which now spans 11 studio albums, 6 compilation albums and 5 collaboration albums (rumour has it, it will change to 6 this year with Watch The Throne 2).
There are several versions of “In My Lifetime” with the most known one being the “Big Jaz Radio Mix” version. The other version which also had a video is the “Original Ski Street Version” which you can see here:
I first heard this song when I watched the 1996 film, “Bullet” which starred both Mickey Rourke and the late Tupac Shakur. I couldn’t help but notice the influence this film had on Rockstar for the making of GTA IV both aesthetically and musically.
As you’ll notice immediately, Jigga was doing the fast rapping style which was very similar to his then-mentor Jaz-O (a.k.a Big Jaz) who he then went on to have a well publicised feud with.
The single dropped in 1995 (yes, that year again!) and it was released by Payday Records, but Jay-Z had royalty conflicts with his label and soon decided to start Roc-A-Fella Records to release his material. The rest as they say is now history!
“In My Lifetime” was also featured on the “Streets Is Watching” soundtrack which is still available.
