JAY-Z has revealed the origin story behind the famous Roc-A-Fella diamond hand sign that he’s used throughout his career.
During a recent in-depth interview with Gayle King on CBS Mornings, the Brookyln rap legend discussed where the gesture actually came from.
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“When we first started, we had a group called Christion,” JAY-Z explained. “When you sell 10 million, you go diamond, right? We believed in them so heavy, we was like, this group is going to sell 10 million records. So, we started putting the diamond up for Christion. That’s how it all came about.”
He continued: “And then we started playing with it, and then we started doing it at shows. Then the whole crowd started doing it, and it stuck.”
Check out the clip around the 1:40 mark below:
Elsewhere in the interview, Hov reminisced about how Chris Martin from Coldplay played a pivotal role in him performing at the Glastonbury Festival in 2008.
The announcement that JAY would be headlining drew criticism from some rockers, most famously Noel Gallagher of Oasis.
“At one point, I was like, ‘Why am I going there?’” JAY-Z recalled as he took Gayle King on a tour through his Book of HOV exhibit.
“If they don’t want me there, I don’t want to go. And Chris from Coldplay was instrumental on [convincing me to play]. He was like, ‘Jay, they love you. It’s just the old guard, they don’t know. It’s always been a rock festival.’ They didn’t have anything against me personally. It was just like, this is a rock festival, this is what it is. The world was changing.”
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JAY then recalled learning how to play Oasis’s hit “Wonderwall” on guitar right before the Glastonbury show — and he went on to famously open his set with a snippet of the song, as a dig at Gallagher. JAY-Z became the first Hip Hop artist to ever play at Glastonbury back in 2008.
