Joe Rogan | The Brilliance of Jay-Z w/Brian Grazer

Because I don't really think of it, you know, that, you know, these sort of creative puzzles that way. I, you know, a creative puzzle would be like, you know, a movie or a TV show or a documentary and, you know, I could go on and, but you, okay. Jay-Z asked me, because I knew Jay-Z because he was very obsessed with wanting to do the soundtrack to a movie called American Gangster, which I produced. Great movie. Love that movie. Did you? Oh, great. Thanks. I liked that one a lot too. But so, and I said as much, you know, as, as impressive as I am with Jay-Z and his level of, you know, mastery himself, I said, look, we've already done the entire score. I mean, you can't do it. It's been done. He said, well, look, I feel a kinship to Frank Lucas, who was played by Denzel Washington. He was a, ends up being a drug dealer, like the biggest heroin dealer in America at the time. And head of like his own mafia that he creates. And so anyway, the bottom line is he feels this kinship to him. He wants to do this. He's very dedicated. I say it's already done as much as, you know, superstar you are and how great you are. And he said, look, I will do a second album. I don't have to be the primary album that's on the screen. I'll do a second album. And I said, but I only have three weeks. He goes, I will do the whole thing in three weeks. And he did it. And I went and saw him. He did the singing. He did the writing. He did, he engineered it. He did every single thing. So the guy, this the king of hip hop, he goes to work. And I was really blown away because he still, you know, he has that grit in him. And, and it turned out to be like for real hip hop lovers, they really liked this album. I guess it was. Everybody loves everything he does though. Jay-Z put out something that was shit. He does it really. Yeah. He's kind of brilliant actually. He's yeah. So he doesn't, he's a brilliant marketer. He's when he, he says things that are very insightful. So he wanted to do, he's after that, he, we got to know each other and then he said, hey, I'm going to do, I'm going to, I want to do a festival, a festival with 24, 22 different artists and all different types. And it's going to be in Love Park and it's called, we're calling it Made in America. Would you produce it? And, and I said, yeah. And I knew that Ron Howard could get a chance at directing it. And I thought it'd be really good for Ron to be around Jay-Z. That's a good thing for him. It's a good, he's got a good aura and the right one for Ron. And I thought, well, so we joined him. And I said, what is this about? You know, what's the premise? And he said, it's about democratization of, of music itself. There's no record stores anymore. And, and the walls are down. You could, you know, you can get, you know, there's a cross over between hip hop and, you know, trance music and all that stuff. So, and I thought that was kind of cool. And then I said, have you ever seen this movie called, because it didn't have a story, this concert, and I should ever see Amadeus. He goes, I never seen Amadeus. And I said, well, it's about genius. And he asked about it and he goes, that's what the premise of this will be. And he immediately thought, had this idea that it should be every artist, every human being has a little bit of genius in them. And he made it very relatable. And that became the thesis of what this documentary became. And he only had that like a week before we were shooting. Wow. So it was kind of remarkable. That's pretty remarkable.