2… Hard Knock Life) and “Big Pimpin’” (from 1999’s Vol. He went on to amass further hits like “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” (from 1998’s Vol. Jay-Z’s debut album, 1996’s Reasonable Doubt, established his hustler attitude. He rose from a tough childhood in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects to earn over 20 Grammys and sell over 100 million albums, all the while perfecting the frank New York flow established by predecessors like the Notorious B.I.G. If ever there were a reasonable doubt that Jay-Z didn’t have the chops to thrive in hip-hop, his modern mogul status proves otherwise.
