When Jay-Z announced a run of shows at Yankee Stadium in New York to celebrate the anniversaries of 1996’s Reasonable Doubt and 2001’s The Blueprint, tickets — to paraphrase “Can’t Knock the Hustle” — moved faster than a rabbit gets… well, let’s just say the July 10 and 11 shows sold out in hours. (A July 12 concert was later added to meet demand.) That announcement arrived 30 years after his first Billboard chart appearance, back when Brooklyn’s Finest was just starting to conquer the globe and be chronicled by Billboard.
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“Jay-Z, who has a fluid, flippy flow, is moving forward in the rap game with the dope, double-sided single ‘Dead Presidents’ backed with ‘Ain’t No N—a,’ ” reported The Rap Column in the April 6, 1996, issue of Billboard. Hailing his “loose lasso lines,” columnist Havelock Nelson said the former track “gained street appreciation and received radio airplay,” while the latter “features feminine phenomenon Foxy Brown” and “shows signs of becoming an even bigger smash.” His first top 10 Hot Rap Songs single, the double side peaked at No. 4 on that chart and hit No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Hova’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt, was “phat an’ all dat,” according to the July 13, 1996, issue. According to a review in the July 20, 1996, Billboard, “This album from the bullet-ridden streets of Brooklyn” is “built atop slinky buttah-bounce, with talk about regulating and maintaining like a kingpin,” featuring “coarse, hard-edged tracks [that] discuss selling white crack for greenbacks.” Moving a reasonable 43,000 copies in its first week (according to Luminate), the album peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200.
The soundtrack to Eddie Murphy’s smash remake of The Nutty Professor boasted “several of this summer’s biggest records,” reported the July 13, 1996, issue, one of those being Jay-Z and Foxy Brown’s hit collaboration. Def Jam/Mercury staged a “wildly successful in-store to promote the soundtrack” at New York’s Virgin Megastore on June 24, tapping Jay and Foxy, as well as fellow Professor emeriti Case, Trigger Tha Gambler and Smoothe Da Hustler. “The crowd was so thick that I was unable to enter the store,” reported our columnist.
“We know rap is a flavor-of-the-month genre, and if any rapper steps away from finicky fans for too long, he or she may as well as hang up the microphone,” ran a column in the Nov. 22, 1997, issue. But Jay had staying power: His second album, In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, moved 138,000 units in its first week and soared to No. 3 on the Billboard 200. It signified the shape of music to come, too. “Rap accounts for three of the top five albums on the Billboard 200 and seven of the top 10 on Top R&B Albums,” noted the same issue. When The Blueprint arrived four years later (eventually spending three weeks atop the Billboard 200), the Sept. 22, 2001, Billboard declared, “Jay-Z deftly proves that while his celebrity status continues to rise, he remains firmly grounded to the street.”
This story appears in the May 30, 2026, issue of Billboard.
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