Jay-Z explains the hood life: ‘I think it’s more important for me to be in touch with who I am than in touch with the streets, per se,’ he says. ‘Being in touch with the streets, keeping it real, that’s become a lie and a cliche. I’m not hanging on the corner in the Bed-Stuy. I hate it when rappers say, “I’m keeping it ‘hood.” I’m like, “Why? What do you mean? No one’s there by choice! You’re in the hood, by choice?”‘
Bling he feels was misinterpreted by the media as tasteless showing off, when really it was a celebration of success by people who had enjoyed precious little of that before. ‘These people came from nothing,’ he says. ‘No-thing. The bottom. And when they got money and cars and houses it was a party.