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Jay-Z: Back in the day
How many "60 Minutes" stories come from a10-year-old child? At least one, the Emmy Award nominated profile of Jay-Z. One day back in 2001 my son Aaron said he wanted to talk to me. He said he had a really good idea for a story. To humor him, I asked him what his idea was.
He said something like this... "Well Dad there's this rapper named Jay-Z. He's really young and really good. He used to be a drug dealer, but now he's a businessman and he makes lots of money." I wasn't sold, but I was interested.
Flash forward a few months. A lot of research, a few dinners and at least one bottle of Cristal later, we were doing the Jay-Z profile. At the time while Jay was the hottest rapper around, it was not at all clear that he was arguably the best ever. Aaron may have sensed it, but I sure didn't.
Looking back at the story all these years later, what strikes me is how we show both the light and dark in Jay's life. We illuminate his triumphs and talent, but also the very dark places where his success was born. At the end of the day achieving that goal was very important to correspondent Bob Simon and co-producer Neeraj Khemlani and also to me.
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