Jay Z, a rap legend, sports agency founder and self-admitted drug dealer told Vanity Fair in a cover story piece he's convinced having once sold crack will help make him a better agent.
"I know about budgets; I was a drug dealer," he told the magazine for its November issue as he reminicised about growing up in Brooklyn's Marcy Homes. "To be in a drug deal, you need to know what you can spend, what you need to re-up."
The 43-year-old hip hop icon recently sold his minority shares in the Brooklyn Nets to launch Roc Nation Sports, where he has already inked deals with the likes of Kevin Durant, Robinson Cano, Geno Smith and the WNBA's Skylar Diggins.
In retrospect, he told Vanity Fair he regrets having played a role in the city's 1980s crack epidemic. He admitted that, at the time, he was driven by the lure of the fast dollar.
When asked if he realized the harm he was doing in his neighborhood by selling drugs, Jay Z said, "Not until later, when I realized the effects on the community. I started looking at the community on the whole. I was thinking about surviving. I was thinking about improving my situation. I was thinking about buying clothes."
According to Vanity Fair, Jay Z raked in $42 million in earnings last year, adding to a net worth Forbes Magazines pegs now stands at around $500 million. The magazine also ranked the earnings of him and wife Beyonce among the highest for couples over the last year at an estimated $95 million.
Jay Z has won 13 Grammys, including two this year for "N- - -as in Paris" and one for "No Church in the Wild," both from his and Kanye West's 2011 album, Watch the Throne.
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