A Nice Pair: Jay-Z

It’s Sunday, it’s a long weekend and it’s time for A Nice Pair, our weekly series of book and vinyl pairings. Today we’ve got How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention by Stephen Witt with The Blueprint by Jay-Z.

How Music Got Free traces the secret cross-Atlantic history of digital music piracy. From the inventors of the MP3 in Germany to a CD manufacturing plant in North Carolina where a factory worker leaked almost 2,000 albums over a decade to Manhattan high-rises where a music exec cornered the market on rap to the corners of the internet, this book is the true story of how online piracy and the MP3 revolutionized music distribution.

The Blueprint album by Jay-Z was just one of thousands of albums that was leaked to the online piracy group Rabid Neurosis (RNS) via employees of the Kings Mountain CD manufacturing plant. The album’s release date was moved up by a week in an attempt to combat the leak with the new date landing on 9/11. Despite these potential challenges, the album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold over 427,000 copies its first week. It’s subsequently sold over 3 million copies and was most recently certified tripled platinum by the RIAA. It features hits such as Izzo (H.O.V.A.) and Renegade.