Jay-Z is the most successful emcee in history. With 14 number one albums on the Billboard chart (11 in a row as a solo artist), 21 Grammys, over 100 million records sold, and countless other side deals, he has repeatedly gone beyond the normal bounds of what a rapper could do.
For years, it felt as if there were no interest in what went into the making of a hip-hop classic.
While other genres, most notably rock, had the backstories of their best results covered extensively (largely because it was often the favorite music of the people in charge of such things), there was not much insight into how a hip-hop classic is made.
Fortunately, that has changed and hip-hop documentaries abound.
The Passion of Christopher Pierznik 