When Jay-Z was young, his uncle told him he would never sell a million records.
By 2010, Jay-Z had sold more than 50 million albums worldwide, according to NPR.
During an interview with Angie Martinez on Hot 97 that year, he recalled his uncle’s prediction. “I sold a million records like a million times.”
Jay-Z had repeated the story so often that he joked about his uncle confronting him at Christmas, asking why he kept bringing it up.
But Jay-Z said he held no resentment toward him.
He believed his uncle was simply passing down his own fears. At the time, selling a million records seemed impossible to him. Even now, Jay-Z said, there were things he had achieved that his uncle probably still struggled to believe.
Later in the interview, when asked what had made him successful, Jay-Z pointed to one thing: VERCOMING HIS FEAR OF FAILURE.