“That book was horrible!” said Jay-Z as he walked away from Forbes staff writer Zack O’Malley Greenburg on Sunday afternoon, September 2, while he was attending the Budweiser Made in America Music Festival in Philadelphia. Greenburg also happens to be the author of the unauthorized biography on Jay-Z entitled “Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went From Street Corner To Corner Office.” If you know of Jay-Z’s story from reading the countless articles written on the rap mogul or hearing any of his music then you must admit that Greenburg’s ability to track down DJ Clark Kent, Questlove of the Roots, Fab 5 Freddy, DeHaven Irby, Jaz-O, and even his former right-hand man Damon Dash is pretty impressive. The latest version of the book includes a fun foreword from Steve Forbes who credits Jay-Z’s sharp business savvy and recounts their previous conversations. I asked Greenburg to speak more about his brief interaction with Jay-Z which he also discusses in detail on Forbes.com.
How did you interpret Jay-Z’s comment?
I think that could be interpreted one of three ways. One, he actually thinks the book is horrible. Two, he was just messing around with me. Three, he doesn’t think it’s horrible but it affected him deeply enough that it kind of broke through his typical calm, cool, composure that would have otherwise dictated that he should have just ignored me enough for him to want to say something and what left out of his mouth was, “That book was horrible!”
What reaction did you get from your colleagues?
It was interesting having written my account of that. I’ve had more people e-mail me or tweet at me or coworkers come up to me in the elevator to talk to me about it than anything I’ve written in a while and it’s been very interesting to get people’s reactions and it’s pretty evenly divided. I was surprised a lot of people thought he was just joking around which could be the case and I think the most common reaction is that people thought it was a good thing. This is an acknowledgement that what you did resonated on some level. I think a lot of people thought that it got under his skin a little bit regardless of whether or not he liked it. It’s probably a little jarring to have someone spend a year rooting through your entire life and publish a book about it. [He laughs.] But then again he had his chance to talk to me and I would certainly still welcome that so I definitely tried my hardest to get him on board so I could get his perspective firsthand. But I guess I’ll have to settle for “that book was horrible.” [He laughs.]
For those of us who were not there please paint a picture of what happened?
I walked out of the Porta-Potty and I saw Jay-Z and Beyonce standing with their backs to me and I think they are about 15 feet away and as I kind of step forward to walk toward him, I’m not really sure what I would have done. I guess I would have tapped him on the shoulder. I don’t know. But before that happened Beyonce stayed where she was and he turned around to walk back passed the Porta-Potties and our eyes met as he turned. And then he looked away and he passed on my left and as he was about two feet away from me I said, “Jay!” He kept walking. He didn’t turn around. As he was walking away I said, “I’m the guy who wrote the book about you.” And he walked for about 10 feet and he looked over his left shoulder and said: “That book was horrible!” Then he sort of cackled the same way he does on his tracks sometimes in the background and kind of sauntered off around the corner with his bodyguards.
For more information on Zack Greenburg’s book, check out Empire State of Mind.