Happy birthday Jay-Z! Check out our list of his 50 greatest songs
Producer Ron “Amen-Ra” Lawrence was record-hunting in 1996 when he found soul singer Yvonne Fair’s “Let Your Hair Down” and tried, as he tells, “giving it a sinister soundtrack feel.” The track, which Diddy originally passed on, was still in rough form – no sound effects, no extra percussion. But when Jay-Z heard what would become “Where I’m From,” the rapper, inspired, immediately began recording his personal verses two bars at a time.
The result is one of Jay’s most candid and intimate tracks; part memoir, part cultural and socioeconomic critique, part distillation of his surroundings both past and present. “He painted a grim picture about Marcy Projects,” Lawrence says. “It gave the listener a mental vision of what it was like for him growing up there in Brooklyn.”
From the blunt, unforgiving song’s opening line – “I’m from where the hammers rung /News cameras never come” – Jay describes a place where “life expectancy is so low, we making out wills at 18.” It’s the inverse of “Imaginary Player,” where decadent luxury takes a backseat to day-by-day survival.
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