JAY-Z has many aliases, one of which being ‘One Take Hov,’ and he broke down its origins in a new conversation with Gayle King.
The Brooklyn native spoke with King for CBS News inside his “Book of HOV” library exhibit in his hometown of Brooklyn. In a preview of the interview which is set to air in full on Thursday (October 26) and Friday (October 27), the Roc Nation mogul explained where the nickname came from back in the day.
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“This was when you were recording to actual tape,” he said. “So you can’t mess up because then you gotta go all the way back and you gotta cut the tape. That’s where the whole ‘One Take Hov’ came from, because if you wanted to fly the chorus on this thing — you had to go to dinner. It took an engineer hours.”
He continued: “He had to cut the tape, fly it over here. So I started learning my lyrics really good so I could do them one time, you understand? Straight down and I didn’t waste time.”
You can watch the clip below:
The usually elusive JAY-Z has been doing a bit more press as of late, and also recently spoke with Complex alongside other greats like Missy Elliott, DJ Khaled and more to recount their experience working with legendary director Hype Williams.
While recalling some of his earlier work with Hype, the Brooklyn native said he sees a whole different version of himself when he looks back – and he’s not the biggest fan.
“Hype definitely has a vision for what he wants to see,” Hov said. “So he’d be like, ‘Yo, blow the smoke right here and this is gonna be crazy, it’s going to be bananas!’ But I don’t know if I was coachable as far as a performance at that time. I don’t know if anyone could coach me, you know, because I was so guarded. I think about the early videos that I have and I listen to myself talking and it’s kind of hard for me to watch.”
He continued: “That’s not even how I speak. So I don’t know if he could coach my performance, but he definitely coached the scene and everything around it. And other people may have a different experience.
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“I’m sure he coached Missy more or coached Busta more and you could get more out of them. I don’t know if he could get more out of us at that time. And then it was like 30 of us and all we wanted to do is laugh.”
