Jay-Z

Jay-Z has been everywhere lately. It’s been 30 years since his acclaimed debut Reasonable Doubt, and he celebrated with a series of concerts at Yankee Stadium. And now there’s the HBO docuseries, JAŸ-Z In 8, in which Jay-Z dissects his catalog with producer Rick Rubin. The series hopes to further cement his legacy as one of the most revered lyricists of our time. But Jay-Z (or JAŸ-Z, as he’s styled it lately.) has always been a polarizing figure, both in his personal life and as a business mogul. So what does this series accomplish? Looking for more episodes about music? Check out these: Ariana Grande stares down the public eye in 'Petal' https://www.npr.org/2026/08/05/nx-s1-5920274/ariana-grande-stares-down-the-public-eye-in-petal It's time to talk about how y'all act at music festivals https://www.npr.org/2026/07/21/nx-s1-5900859/its-time-to-talk-about-how-yall-act-at-music-festivals Most overused songs in movies https://www.npr.org/2025/10/09/nx-s1-5566097/most-overused-songs-in-movies Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Aisha Harris?

  So you may have noticed Jay-Z's been everywhere lately. It's been 30 years since his acclaimed debut, Reasonable Doubt. And to celebrate, he put on a series of sold-out, star-studded concerts at Yankee Stadium, made a big show of cutting off his famous locks, and now this. Jay-Z and Eight, an HBO docu-series where Hove dissects song lyrics across his catalog with the storied producer Rick Rubin. The obvious play here is to further cement his legacy as one of the most revered lyricists of our time. But Jay-Z's always been this kind of polarizing figure when it comes to how he's moved as a business mogul and in his personal life. So who is this series for exactly? And does it do what it sets out to do? I'm Aisha Harris, and we're going to get into that here on NPR's Pop Culture Happy

• 1:04Aisha Harris?

  Hour with culture writer and critic Shamira Ibrahim. Hi, Shamira. Great to have you here.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Hey, Ayesha. Great to be here, as per usual.

• 1:12Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yes, yes. So, look, the concept here is pretty simple. Over eight episodes, it's just Jay and Rubin sitting in the middle of an empty lavish hall in Paris, playing and then picking apart tracks like Meet the Parents and Can I Live. And it's shot in black and white by the great cinematographer Bradford Young, who worked on the movies Arrival and Selma. Jay-Z is a producer on this project, as is Rick Rubin and Daniel Kaluuya. So essentially, this is like old-school rap genius annotations or a collegiate English masterclass, but make it high art.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:46Aisha Harris?

  Right?

• 1:47Speaker 02

  I mean, I feel like it's many things. I'm not entirely sure that I feel like it's a documentary, though, which is

• 1:52Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  kind of my sticky point on how it's been packaged, you know?

• 1:56Aisha Harris?

  That is absolutely fair. I think we can kind of debate those merits absolutely. But yeah, Jay-Z and Eight is airing on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. And so Shamira, I guess let's just get into it. Who do you think this was meant for? And generally speaking, do you think it's doing what it set out to do? As I've already kind of asked, I'm curious what your thinking is on that front.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Well, I think that's my ultimate question, right? I don't know what it sets out to do. I don't know if it sets out to provide novel insight into Jay-Z's lyricism, which is a project he's done repeatedly

• 2:27Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  you know, over the years, starting probably with the early 2010s with Decoded, which he worked on directly with Dream Hampton as a book. Or if it's supposed to provide like novel insight into his life, which there are glimpses of Jay-Z's life, but there aren't really extensive swatches of novel insight that the average superfan wouldn't already know, unless you're really curious to know how he feels about the Tupac Biggie beef. In which case, then you will find out plenty, I guess, right?

• 2:55Aisha Harris?

  Sure, sure.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  This was the record that made Tupac and I have a little bit of problem. It's just because him and Big and I was next to Big and thing. But on this song, when he ends it, "I'm warning ya," the next thing he said, "I'm warning ya," was "most hated in California." I was like, no, no, no, no, no. He's taking that out. I don't want to be a part of that.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  I think it's like a remarkable testament to like the desire of someone as large as Jay-Z to feel the need to cement and establish his legacy, but also rub up against his inclination to have as much control as possible over his narrative and the myth of his rise as possible, right? It leaves you with like this tension of like, well, you want me to celebrate you, but you want to control what I know about you to celebrate and also resist any interrogation, right? He bristles against the idea that we have a right to challenge him on his perceptions of things, right?

• 3:48Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  And so we really get like a really lovely exhibit with a fascinating sound system. And I really enjoyed listening to the crisp audio. I don't know if I came away feeling like I had a new perspective on Jay-Z. Granted, I grew up in New York, so I've been exposed to Jay-Z for the last three decades, right? But I don't know if I really felt like I came away with something novel or insightful, except for maybe some resolution of like longstanding lyrical debates that we've had.

• 4:14Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, I would count myself as a very casual Jay-Z fan. Like, I was a suburban kid whose parents would only let, like, the closest I could get to buying a rap album when I was, you know, 10, 11, 12 was Will Smith, Big Willie Style, and Millennium. And so like my exposure to Jay-Z was like purely through radio and MTV at the time, Big Pimpin', Can I Get a? Like, that was like kind of what I knew. And as I've grown older, obviously, I followed him through his proximity to Beyoncé and also his bigger songs that he's done with, collaborations with other artists. So I'm a very casual fan, and yet I feel the same way, which is like, I don't feel like I learned anything new that I didn't already know about him, you know?

• 4:56Aisha Harris?

  Like, this is the type of thing where I think the hardcore Jay-Z fans who, I hate to say it, who are not very critical about him as an artist or as a figure in the public square will probably gobble this up. I think some people who hold on tightly to this idea of preserving hip hop and preserving the artistry of hip hop will find things to like about this because, we can say what you will about him, I think that he is kind of one of those people who still stands in for a certain idea of what hip hop used to be. And so hearing him dissect lyrics and paying so much attention to lyrics when we've kind of moved away from that as a culture where lyrics are less important, generally speaking,

• 5:40Aisha Harris?

  in hip hop, or some people would argue that they are less important depending on the biggest mainstream artists that you're talking about, I totally see why this would be attractive to them. Like, there's a moment in the first episode where he and Rick Rubin are chatting, and at one point, he says like, oh, we'll get to that later, like, just as an aside.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  And my grandfather had his demons, you know, he had a bunch of demons. He got his, you know, we'll get into that.

• 6:06Aisha Harris?

  And I was like, oh, this is very planned. Like, you can tell the way that Rick Rubin, and Rick Rubin also directed, he's not just a producer, but he also directed this series. I just found it so calculated and sterile.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:20Aisha Harris?

  There was no mediness, like, yes, you can dissect it line by line, and you feel as though maybe you're getting something, but I didn't feel like I was actually getting much out of it, right?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  You know, what's so fascinating to me is despite how curated it was, it felt like it just surprisingly lacked structure. Like, I was really trying to figure out what the connecting threads were between the selection of songs or even the direction of questioning. It wasn't like the songs are grouped by album, right?

• 6:47Aisha Harris?

  No, no.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  In some ways, I guess, they were grouped by topic. Like, there were some times where it seemed like, okay, we're talking about like Jay-Z's canon of like really, you know, open, emotional songs, which are pretty limited in his catalog. So everyone kind of knows, obviously, 444 is the more recent one, where he's talking openly about infidelity. But it really felt like, for the breadth of the conversation, it still seemed to kind of be a little directionless. And I still don't really understand what the connecting philosophy was around what was supposed to be communicated, aside from the fact that Jay-Z has a remarkable, and I mean this sincerely, remarkable capacity for retaining his lyrics and retaining the intention and memory associated with his song-making and craftsmanship.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Like, the fact that he can have almost instant recall of songs is a testament to his one-of-a-kind, unique skill set as an MC. I just don't know if, beyond like a few seemingly unintentional moments, we really get much clarity as to his whole animus as an artist, how he feels like it affects his life, and how he looks at establishing his legacy from now on.

• 7:56Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, to that point, I think what you're saying about his memory and also just like, while watching this, I was like, he's a very personable person. I can see why people would be drawn to him, and I can understand, like, he is very affable. Like, there's not a lot of friction here, but like, he has a way of saying nothing, but also making it feel somewhat compelling in a way that he says it and the way he just chats. But I do think this is where I butt up against, you know, you and me both, we have experience interviewing people. Neither of us are famous. And this is where I come up across this, where it's like, I am getting very sick of celebrities interviewing other celebrities.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  I mean, let's get into it.

• 8:41Aisha Harris?

  Can we talk about it?

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Because to be frank, you know, one of the things that stood out to me is like, just a few months ago, Jay-Z had a very publicized interview with GQ's Fraser Tharp. And, you know, even if you may have, you know, criticisms about the form or whether or not it was too complimentary, one thing that Fraser was successfully able to do is get Jay-Z to directly answer specific questions about his perspectives on specific things in his life on record.

• 9:07Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  I feel like we spent so much time in this docu-series talking around the friction around things without just addressing it head-on. And when there were moments to address it, it was almost ignored. Like, at one point, you know, they talk a little bit about his relationship with Nas.

• 9:23Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  They mention the beef, and like, Jay-Z starts to lodge into, you know, him being like, well, me and Nas are friends now. And like Rick kind of changed the topic, like, no, I want to hear more about that. When did you and Nas start becoming great friends? Like, what was that process towards healing that? This is something that is worth, you know, sinking into, right? Or when they talk about, you know, Jay-Z's history with Kanye, which obviously we know is notably fractured and volatile, especially in recent years. And, you know, Jay-Z does talk and acknowledge Kanye's influence and greatness, but Shaw is just sort of just really acknowledging like their fracture and his feeling of betrayal, although he discusses betrayal mattering to him significantly. Those are just moments where it just felt like we're really talking around some really

• 10:09Speaker 02

  pivotal points in Jay-Z's life that are like kind of foundational to understanding his legacy as an artist. And I don't really understand, or rather, I believe that someone who's more attuned to the skill of interviewing would probably have lingered on those points a bit more.

• 10:23Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. The thing that happens so often in this series is Rick Rubin will just kind of lay up a very soft ball, like, tell me about this, or like, explain the Tupac and Biggie beef. And then Rick Rubin is kind of acting as though he doesn't know these things, like, he's not aware, as if he didn't co-found Def Jam Records, like, okay. And then he's like also sitting there wide-eyed and like sometimes barefoot. I'm like, what are we doing here? Sitting there like a child or just like someone who's just like, wow. Like, you could make a meme, like a video meme of him, like, every time he says, wow, and his eyes open up are like, yeah, that's, that's so deep. Like, There's just no friction here.

• 11:06Aisha Harris?

  And sometimes like a song lyric will come up where the R word will come up or a line about Koreans looking like a Korean or a kind of teetering on antisemitism line about Jewish people. And nothing, no interrogation of that.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:24Aisha Harris?

  Obviously, these songs are older and we're in a different time. But like, if I was a journalist interviewing him, I would be asking him, okay, let's talk about this line.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Well, especially if the pretense is we're doing a close read of your lyrics. Right? Like, that's the entire premise here. So I mean, then let's do the close read. Like, especially when so much of the conversation, Jay-Z kind of sits on his laurels and says to the effect of, I choose my words very intentional. I'm very aware of the multiple interpretations of things. And if you were thinking it could be one or the other, the answer is often that it's both. Right? That that is his game of being a wordsmith. That is his approach to semantic and rhetorical wordplay, which I genuinely think is impressive and showcases him as like a real master of the English language.

• 12:09Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. Again, this is where I keep bumping up against what I think he's trying to do, right? And as you've already mentioned, he did decoded the book that came out around 2010, The Dream Hampton. And he's done a lot of profiles. He's sat with various people and he's talked about certain things, but he's talked around them. And I think he kind of lands on like, my music speaks for itself to some extent. But then at the same time, you have him and his wife Beyonce often using signifiers of radicalism, political activism. And I think about the fact that this series, essentially this rollout is happening and coinciding with the release of a former NFL star Colin Kaepernick's new memoir.

• 12:53Aisha Harris?

  And in that memoir, he addresses his interactions with Jay-Z. And Jay-Z's company, Roc Nation, partnered with the NFL, which was a move that was seen by many, you know, including Kaepernick, as effectively undercutting his protests against police brutality. And then Jay-Z seemed to take a swipe at Kaepernick during a freestyle he did at one of his recent shows at Yankee Stadium in July. So this all seems at odds with the persona he's trying to craft here in this series because they do kind of touch a little bit on politics here and and sort of what Jay-Z feels his responsibility, you know, as a famous person and as a person with power. But it also just seems like we're seeing how that plays out in real life versus how he presents himself here.

• 13:37Aisha Harris?

  And I feel like there's this really fractured juxtaposition between this idea of capitalism and him being able to like capitalize on signifiers that suggest like, I'm doing this for our people. But it's like, I don't know, man. Like, that doesn't come out in this series. It doesn't come out in how he moves.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  I fully get you on that. And I did find it to be in dialogue with the ongoing conversation with regards to Kaepernick, but not in the way that people expect, right? Like, I think some people expected like a direct response or, you know, way for him to to speak on, well, you've mentioned Kaepernick in your songs or your rhetoric. Now, obviously, the tune has changed, right? But what I found more interesting was that he finds different ways to kind of impress upon both Rick and of course, you know, the watchers and listeners, that the prosperity gospel capitalist approach that he has is not something that he's like capitulating to, right? I think sometimes for some people, the the concept for people is like, oh, no, you know, Jay-Z is bought and sold for in the idea of like, he has been told that, you know, he has to be an avatar to maintain his wealth.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Whereas if you watch how he articulates his life experience to Rick Rubin, it's quite clear that his core narrative is, I took capitalism by the reins. I was a hustler and then I turned the rap game into a hustle and it worked. It's very hard for him to fundamentally believe the idea that capitalism and the structure of capitalism can be harmful when he views it as a tool of liberation for himself and a way that he views that rap can be used as a tool of liberation or a tool of motivation for listeners to say, I can do it too, right?

• 15:12Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. At one point, he talks about the whole Cristal thing where like, he and a lot of his cohorts were promoting Cristal. And then all of a sudden, whoever was kind of like the face of Cristal spoke up and was basically disdainful of this idea that like hip hop embraced it. And so he kind of talks about it here where he's just like, yeah, and then I took them out of my club.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:31Aisha Harris?

  That's his idea of like, kind of like sticking it to the man.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then, you know, Ace of Spades came and, you know, the the brand behind Ace of Spades came and it was a fortuitous opportunity. But it's very clear to me that Jay-Z's perception is that he has been able to amass power through these moves and that is proof of capitalism being a tool to liberate the black underclass, right? It is something that he clearly genuinely believes and was always then going to be at odds with any political gesture he was making. And it comes back to like when Occupy Wall Street was big and Jay had his own counter shirts that said Occupy All Streets. Again, kind of playing on the big black capitalism work for you. So it's interesting to watch those sort of sentiments and his thinking on those sentiments bleed through, right?

• 16:19Speaker 02

  He has a point, for example, that he goes on a protracted kind of explanation of his frustration with, he doesn't mention her by name, but Elizabeth Mendes Berry, who interviewed him a few years back for The Village Voice and confronted him over his Che Guevara shirt where he had like a large diamond on. And he directly responded to it in a verse and talked about his Che Guevara with bling on, I'm complex. And like, it's clear that like, it still bristles him a lot, right? All these years later, right? Like, it's still something that, you know, gets in his ear. And it's interesting to watch him get so easily frustrated by what are like, yes, maybe pointed, but fairly straightforward critiques of what people have issue with him. And him still struggle to wrestle with it all these years later.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  It just seems to be reminiscent of like, a lack of willingness to like, let himself be interrogated and let himself be challenged. And I think that limitation kind of bleeds through in what we saw on screen.

• 17:12Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. Well, we'll have much more about Jay-Z after the break.

• 17:17Speaker 04

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• 18:19Aisha Harris?

  Welcome back. Look, I'm not here trying to advocate, like, I don't need Jay-Z to be the face of a movement, right? Like, I don't want that from him or Beyonce. But like, I do think if you're gonna do what they have done, which is often trading these signifiers, like even bringing it back to Kaepernick, like Kaepernick has said, you know, at first, he was wearing my jersey, right? He was like, supporting me. And then he goes and makes a deal with the NFL. And the series doesn't address that, but I do think that like, he tries to have it both ways. And while I'm not entirely certain he's gonna have his like Ed Sheeran moment where he like is forced to confront it in a way where it's like, you can't just be a political man.

• 18:58Aisha Harris?

  But I do think like this series is kind of like his way of putting it on the record. It's another way to sort of like cement his legacy and make it seem as though we're going very, very deep because it's eight episodes long. And my God, it did not need to be this long. Him and Beyonce are so obsessed with four, the number four. This could have been done in a tight four. It would have worked, I think.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Well, I guess I'm curious about this for you.

• 19:21Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Why do you think they went with this being a video project and not, let's say, a podcast mini-series, right? I don't know how much value the actual visual element of the project really offered. It was crystal clear sonics, like whatever speakers they were using in that room.

• 19:38Aisha Harris?

  Sounded fantastic.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  But I'm not really entirely sure if like, you know, two minutes of Jay and Rick standing and nodding, you know, was was particularly conducive to really adding more clarity into what they were talking about.

• 19:51Aisha Harris?

  Because I think that Jay-Z, and not to bring Beyonce into this again, but I think both of them, they prize the visual. They prize it as like a way of, uh, it is, again, it's high art to them. Like, I think about when Jay-Z did that stunt with Picasso Baby.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:11Aisha Harris?

  That was like a video. It was him just rapping the same song over and over for how many hours? And in like an art gallery, I think a podcast is too quote unquote lowly for them. Like, they wouldn't necessarily say that, but it's like beneath them. Like, they see cinema as, which is why they have Bradford Young and why Daniel Kaluuya is a executive producer. Like, this is a way to elevate the show beyond like what it would be for a podcast. And the fact that it's on HBO. Like, I think all of those things make it seem way more. And look, we're podcasters. I'm a podcaster. Like, I'm not trying to demean the art. I am saying that for them, that would not be enough. And I think there's just a little, like, it's sexier this way.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:55Aisha Harris?

  One other thing I will say is that this does feature the lyrics on the screen. And I think that adds something to it.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  And the lyrics do add another element for sure. Because I do remember when they put the lyrics to a song, You Don't Know, which there's been a long debate about whether Jay-Z says sell water to a well or water to a whale, right?

• 21:14Aisha Harris?

  Oh, right, right.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  I remember seeing the lyrics come across the screen and realizing, oh, wow, we finally have the answer. I do think like those sort of small moments were kind of like, it adds to the art form. I just wish that the director would have more license to actually give their POV. I think part of my sticking point with projects like this, and I think this includes his wife to some extent, is that even though there's like a celebration of the inclusion into high art, fine art spaces, it seems to always kind of fall short of like embracing the nuances of what makes those art forms powerful, right? So for a documentary, it's not just being able to tell your story. It's really, you know, for someone else to be able to given a unique insight

• 21:57Speaker 02

  into different edges of your life that may not be immediately evident by you just, you know, self-reporting your own narrative. And by taking the reins and curating it for yourself, you kind of rob yourself of that process of discovery, right? You know? And they have refined the machine that creates the art product, but the actual essentials are still kind of just as sparse as they were before.

• 22:20Aisha Harris?

  And I even think of the video that they put out about him cutting off his locks. And then it's just like, oh, this is really just an ad for sacred. Like, this is what we're doing. Like, again, there's this tension and I do wonder, had they had an actual director, not Rick Rubin, but like someone else, I don't know who, like Ava DuVernay, or like, I don't know, someone. Because Ava DuVernay has actually worked with them before. She's done one of their videos.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 22:48Aisha Harris?

  So like, I could see that being far more interesting visually. But then, maybe not, because again, the way it's structured is, for the most part, except for one later episode where there's just, literally just talking up until like, no music except for the end credits. Like, it is mostly just them standing in the middle of a room, an empty room, except for, you know, speakers and a table, and talking back and forth and lots of nodding. And, yeah, it probably would have been better as a podcast, perhaps, save for the lyrics, like, having that cleared up. But, yeah, man, I had to roll my eyes so many times during it. Like, the "keep one eye open" like CBS from "Can I Live",

• 23:29Aisha Harris?

  and then he's like, "It's the CBS logo, but also CBS, as in C-Bull." And I'm like, "Oh, okay, okay, grandpa, okay."

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 23:42Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  And to give it some credit, I do think there were some moments that were remarkably insightful, right? Like, I think this is arguably the longest that Jay-Z has gone on record about his relationship with Biggie Smalls, the rapper notorious B.I.G., since Biggie's passing, you know? We've heard, like, bits and pieces, right? But it was, as a rap fan, as someone who grew up loving Jay lyrics and Biggie lyrics, to hear Jay talk about punching in lyrics with Biggie on Brooklyn's Finest. Like, that is, you know, an all-time moment for me, right? They came in and punched it up and kind of bounced off each other. Genuinely great. Hearing Jay-Z talk about the mechanics of what makes Biggie's voice and vocals so distinctive is actually magnificently insightful

• 24:28Speaker 02

  into the way that his brain works and how he thinks about the mechanics of a voice and even the way he talks about how he views his voice evolving over his own career. Like, those are the points where you're like, okay, this is the magic. The moments where there is that just like, really sharp, pointed clarity about just the music industry and how the industry really affects celebrity and individuals and how it can swallow you whole. All those kind of brief glimpses into like, how Jay-Z feels about his rise in New York and his rise in rap, something that he never really intended to do, right? Like, he says, he thought he was just gonna essentially make one rap album and then go and become a rap mogul, which is an interesting thing to even contend with, right? You know?

• 25:12Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And instead of really lingering on that, we just end up meandering in so many places that you could almost blink and miss the moments where it does become exceptional. And I think those moments are exceptional to listen to.

• 25:23Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, and I want to stand up for a moment because I don't want to sound like a complete hater. Because there were moments, like you said, that there is some clarity. I think also, you know, not that these are things that I didn't already know, but I think if we're thinking about other audiences and especially younger audiences, there is a little bit of like, a lay of the land of what hip-hop was like at that, like, when he was coming up. And I think that is another way, in the, like, in oral tradition, of like, putting these things down and having it for the next generation. Like, I think there's a little bit of an attempt to like, put him into the context of history, but also kind of explain hip-hop in a way that like, perhaps younger generations may not be aware of. So I think those moments, and especially when Rick Rubin,

• 26:06Aisha Harris?

  like, drops the whole, like, "I'm just a, I'm just a fan" act. And actually, like, when there is actually some back and forth and they're both trading on stories and like, talking about the same people that they both know. Those are the moments where it's like, okay, this is where the celebrity on celebrity interview can have some value. I still think it's overvalued. And again, we don't get enough of like, even just moments where Rick Rubin is asking him, you know, like, "Do you have any regrets?" Or like, he kind of talks about some songs he would redo, but I want to hear more about the failures. Like, I want to hear him talk about like, DOA. Like, I want to hear him talk about that and whether his perspective has changed. Like, ugh, yeah, I just, I just kind of wanted more of that.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:50Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. Woo, well, that brings us to the end of our show. Shamira Ibrahim, thanks so much for being here. This was, this was fun. I, I had a lot of fun.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Thanks, as always, you know? I'm looking forward to seeing you here for the 30th anniversary of the Black Album, which is sooner than I want to miss.

• 27:10Aisha Harris?

  Oh, man, what a way to feel not as young anymore, that's for sure.

• 27:17Aisha Harris?

  This episode was produced by Mike Gatzif, Lennon Sherburne, Kaden Mills, and Liz Metzger, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Kimin provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next time.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 27:39Speaker 04

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• 28:23Speaker 04

  Download the free Angie app today or visit Angie.com. That's A-N-G-I dot com.