Damn, It Feels Good to be a Gangster

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The stakes are high, the victories giddy and the ironies savored as Jay-Z’s drug-dealer character lives out the glamorous underside of the American Dream. On the album’s triumphant peak, “Roc Boys,” he thanks his connection, crooked cops, drug users and, possibly, accountants (“Mazel tov, it’s a celebration, bitches/L’chaim”), reveling in the corruption and sickness that make his trade so lucrative and so hard to leave behind. “So let the champagne pop,” he declares on “Blue Magic.” “I partied for a while, now I’m back to the block.”

In the noir-classic Chinatown, a scheming old millionaire is asked the question: “What can you buy that you can’t already afford?” “The future,” replies the magnate. In Jay-Z’s case, the key to that future may lie in his past.

What is it about this movie that opened the creative floodgates?
It was the emotions I remember from that time. Paranoia, excitement, addiction. It really is an addiction. After a while in the game, you become addicted to the excitement and the sense of uncertainty. Because any day could be your last. Cops are watching you, enemies are watching you — and knowing that, it’s this weird … rush.

It sounds like you’d never felt more alive.
[Nods and raps] “I never felt more alive/Than ridin’ shotgun in Cline’s green five.” I said that on [The Black Album’s] “Allure.” Absolutely. Because every second of that time you’re on pins and needles. It’s like gambling — gambling every day. For the highest stakes.

Do you gamble today?
Yeah. But I can’t re-create the feeling. [Laughs] I wish.

We hear you like to play the card game guts. What’s the most money you ever won or lost at it?
Mmm … probably 100 some thousand dollars.

Won or lost?
Oh, no, I’ve never lost 100 thousand. I’ve maybe lost 30 thousand. I’m a pretty good gambler — a calculated-risk gambler.

Do you bet on sports?
I may bet on the Super Bowl. I’ve bet on that before. Anywhere between 30 and 50.

… grand, right?
[Laughs] What’d you think, million?