Jay Z Opens Up About Drug Dealer Past

Jay Z talked with Vanity Fair recently and really opened up about his controversial past. He talked in detail about his life before the fame, specifically about selling crack out on the streets.

The 43-year-old rapper claims that the area he was in had a lot to do with his history of selling drugs,

“There wasn’t any place you could go for isolation or a break. You go in the hallway; [there are] crackheads in the hallway. You look out in the puddles on the curbs—crack vials are littered in the side of the curbs. You could smell it in the hallways, that putrid smell; I can’t explain it, but it’s still in my mind when I think about it.”

He also said that drug dealing helped teach him how to budget his money,

“I know about budgets. I was a drug dealer. To be in a drug deal, you need to know what you can spend, what you need to re-up. Or if you want to start some sort of barbershop or car wash—those were the businesses back then. Things you can get in easily to get out of [that] life.”

That makes a lot of sense actually, but obviously there are better ways to learn about saving money. For example, I learned about business from starting my own lemonade stand back when I was 10-years-old.

I’d make sh-tty lemonade filled with sugar and sell it to my horribly obese neighbors. I guess in a way, I was a drug dealer if you think about it. I might not have been selling anything illegal, but I was contributing to someone’s addiction.

But like Jay Z, I wasn’t worried what effects my lemonade stand had on the community, I was just thinking about buying clothes baseball cards.

“I was thinking about surviving. I was thinking about improving my situation. I was thinking about buying clothes.”