Jay-Z has been writing raps for over a decade, starting with documenting them in a green notebook before eventually abandoning writing them down altogether. His hardest album to create, he told The New York Times Magazine, was 4:44.
“‘4:44’ was the toughest thing I had to write—and not lyrically, not the greatest metaphors I’ve ever created. But like the vulnerability and the honesty, the transparency—that’s hard. That’s a difficult thing,” he said as part of an article naming him one of the 30 greatest American living songwriters.
“But to do it for the entire album and to sit in that and like talk about real subjects … and how your kids are going to feel, and you know, at some point, you’re going to have to sit down and speak to them, and all these different topics, that was the most difficult album that I had to write.”
Jay was praised by the magazine as a rapper who has always spoken with the “voice of experience,” one whose “combination of sangfroid and swagger established a new way for rappers to self-present, maintaining street credibility while pursuing both pop success and a more audacious kind of crossover, from performer to executive to tycoon.”
Others on the list include Smokey Robinson, Outkast, Babyface, The-Dream, Missy Elliott, Young Thug, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie and Kendrick Lamar.
The criteria included input from more than 250 music insiders and six New York Times critics who focused on “contemporary practitioners working in the ever-evolving tradition of the great American songbook,” according to the publication.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
