30 years after ‘Reasonable Doubt,’ Jay-Z’s career embodies hip-hop’s biggest contradictions

By Jabari M. Evans, Assistant Professor of Race and Media, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina

“Reasonable Doubt” was not the first rap album I ever owned. But Jay-Z’s debut was the first hip-hop album I bought with my own money. More importantly, it was the first one I studied as a young writer who aspired to become a rapper, a dream that eventually came true.

Jay-Z sounded cool in a way that resembled a jazz musician more than a conventional rap star. He rapped with a quiet calm that also conveyed supreme confidence.…

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