Jay Z is still performing miracles in the studio
At 52, Jay Z delivered a sublime near 4-minute verse on DJ Khaled’s album title song, “God Did.” According to Hov’s long-time engineer Young Guru, the New York legend laid down the verse in just one take.
“People think I’m still not amazed when he walk in and do these verses,” Guru said in a discussion with Genius’ Rob Markman and GQ’s Frazier Tharpe. “And this one was different because normally, we’ll sit down, we’ll do a song, three verses, two verses or whatever, and he’ll have a verse and then we’ll figure out what’s next.
“No, he walked in and this was completely, he’s spitting the verse to me. One take. He’s literally asking me, ‘Guru, put the beat on.’ I’m like, ‘Khaled didn’t send me the beat, you didn’t send me the beat. Send me the beat.’ So then he sends me the joint and I started trying to loop it, and he was just like, ‘No, no, no, hit Khaled and get the whole instrumental,’ so he could spit the whole verse.”
He added, “I didn’t know he had almost four minutes and how many bars or whatever ready, so I’m just in amazement of watching him do this again at 52 years old. It’s like, I never stop being amazed. That’s why I tweeted ’cause it’s just like, ‘Yo, I don’t really wanna have a conversation after this.’”