Jay-Z‘s new interview with the U.K.’s Guardian includes some juicy quotes about the day when, at age 12, he shot his drug-addicted older brother in the shoulder for stealing a piece of jewelry. “I thought my life was over,” the rapper says of the incident, which took place 28 years ago in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects. “I thought I’d go to jail for ever.” His brother recovered from the shooting and declined to press charges, but for obvious reasons young Shawn Carter remained shaken. “It was terrible,” he tells the Guardian. “I was a boy, a child. I was terrified.”
It’s a gripping story — but is it a new one? While the Guardian states that Jay-Z “has never publicly talked about [the shooting] before,” and other publications have repeated this claim, a quick Google search reveals 2003 pieces by CBS News, Time, and the New York Observer that all mention the event. Last year, he went over it with Oprah Winfrey. And of course, as the Guardian acknowledges, he rapped quite movingly about shooting his brother way back on 1997′s “You Must Love Me.” The point here isn’t to play “gotcha” with the Guardian‘s interview. It’s a good read, and it’s true that none of those older articles include such vivid quotes from Jay-Z about the shooting. But serious fans had been aware of this chapter in his past for many years. READ FULL STORY »
After months of 
