Happy Birthday To Jay-Z And His YouTube-Released Documentary

By 12/05/2012
Happy Birthday To Jay-Z And His YouTube-Released Documentary

Shawn Carter AKA Jay-Z AKA Hova turned 43 on December 4, but the eminently successful rapper has decided to flip the script by giving all of us a present. Jay-Z has released Where I’m From, a 22-minute documentary, exclusively on his Life + Times YouTube channel.

Where I’m From follows Jay-Z as he prepares for and performs eight concerts to inaugurate the Barclays Center, the new arena of the Brooklyn Nets. The documentary mostly takes place within the arena itself, which is located a short train ride away from Jay-Z’s childhood home in Brooklyn. Throughout the film’s runtime, we see how Jay-Z psyches himself up for his shows and how his various crew members fit into the equation.

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One scene has been making the rounds on the Internet, hitting the front page of Reddit and several major news outlets. The scene features Jay-Z riding the subway to the Barclays Center, where he encounters visual artist Ellen Grossman, who has no idea who he is. As several commenters have noted, it’s a way more interesting scene than the many rap videos featuring money and scantily-clad women.

In its first day on YouTube, Where I’m From has already been viewed over 179,000 times. The documentary’s release allowed Jay-Z’s official channel (branded around his Life + Times magazine) to see a noticeable subscriber bump as well, with more than 1300 people subbing his channel on December 4th alone.

We previously wrote about some of YouTube’s popular stars finding a place on Spotify’s most shared list alongside Jay-Z, and we took it as an indicator that online video was starting to break into the mainstream. Where I’m From shows that we had it backwards: it’s the mainstream that’s breaking into online video. Jay-Z, I commend you, wish you a happy birthday, and urge you to switch your allegiance to my favorite basketball team (there’s still time!)

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