Jay-Z is one of the most talented, successful and acclaimed musicians of all time. He changed the game and without him, music - and more specifically hip hop - would not be in the medium it is today. From the very beginning, for Shawn Corey Carter, writing was easy. Born in Brooklyn in 1969, he remembers how for days he filled page after page of a notebook, then he would bang out a beat on the table, his bedroom window - whatever had a flat surface. He would practice from the time he woke up, until the time he went to sleep. His life has two main stories: The story of the rapper and the story of the hustler. These two tales overlap just as much as they diverge. Jay-Z has made rap accessible to a wide audience but never lost sight of who he is - he never shied away from past problems and often voiced his story in the hope of helping others struggling with their lives as he once did.