Biographie

4 décembre 1969 · Brooklyn, Ville de New York, New York, États-Unis

Shawn Corey Carter

1,86 m

I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man.

I come from the Marcy projects, in Brooklyn, which is considered a tough place to grow up, but this [showed me] how good we have it. The rappers who say, 'We're from the 'hood,' take it from me, you're not from the 'hood. You haven't seen people with no access to water. It really put things in perspective. - [His thoughts regarding trip taken to Africa in 2006 on his first world tour, where he discovered that 1.1 billion people don't have clean drinking water.]

[on his marriage to Beyoncé]This is my real life. I just ran into this place and we built this big beautiful mansion of a relationship that wasn't totally built on the 100 percent truth and it starts cracking. Things start happening that the public can see.Then we had to get to a point of, Okay, tear this down and let's start from the beginning.It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

[on why he played 4:44, his new album for Beyoncé before anyone else]We just got to a place where, in order for this to work, this can't be fake. Not one ounce. I'm not saying it wasn't uncomfortable because obviously it was.