He goes by many names: Young Hov, Hova The God, Jigga, Shawn Carter, but for most of us he is simply known as Jay-Z (and yes, there is a hyphen in his name, we don't care how trendy it is to not include it). Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter is often considered the greatest rapper alive, and for good reason. He has consistently shown and proven for the last twenty years. From his debut album Reasonable Doubt to his latest album Magna Carta Holy Grail. It's weird when you look back on it but during the early '90s Jay couldn't give his demo away. So him, Dame Dash and Kareem "Biggs" Burke put up their own money and started Roc-A-Fella Records. The rest, as they say, was history. Now, we're all familiar with Hov's biggest hit records - Hard Knock Life, Give It 2 Me, Encore, Empire State of Mind, Picasso Baby, etc - but today we're going to be looking at a few Jay-Z songs that you may not be familiar with. Seeing as we recently shared with you twenty obscure Kanye West songs that you were probably unfamiliar with it only seems fair that Ye's "Big Brother" get the same treatment. Some of the songs are early '90s demo cuts that made their way to the internet and others are features with artists that you may have forgotten about. In either case, these are twenty Jay-Z songs you've (probably) never heard before.
20. Jay-Z - Dead Presidents 3
Dead Presidents is probably best remembered as the first single off of Jay-Z's debut album Reasonable Doubt. However, it didn't actually appear on the album: a different version, with the same backing track and chorus but different lyrics, called "Dead Presidents II", appeared on Reasonable Doubt instead. This resulted in the video for the song and the actual song on the album to have completely different lyrics. Nevertheless, the song is still a classic. Jay-Z finally recorded Dead Presidents 3 around the time of The Black Album but it was never completed. The unfinished song was leaked onto the internet in the fall of 2007. In it, Jay-Z referenced some of his lyrics from the original Dead Presidents and he used the same sample but the sample was played in reverse and had a gloomy more atmospheric feel to it.
19. Jay-Z This Life Forever
There was a time when Jay-Z had one foot in the music industry and one foot still in the streets. During the day he might be in the studio but by night he was still quite involved with typical drug dealing endeavors. Songs like This Life Forever reflects that: I ride through the ghetto windows down halfway. Halfway out of my mind, music on 9, blasting Donny Hathaway. Me and n***** spending half the day. Plotting, how we gon get this math today without getting blast away. As Jay pronounces at the opening of the track, this song is brought to you by him in association with the streets. In other words, Jay was really about that life. Not some wannabe, not some chain snatcher or petty street thug who snatched purses. No, Jay was indeed a refined gangster.