Music Idris Elba Details How He ‘Hustled His Way Onto’ Jay-Z’s ‘American Gangster’ Album

“I was in American Gangster and at the time, I heard Jay was about to do an album associated with the film and I was like, ‘I need to get on that.’ As you do. You’re like, ‘I’m Idris, I need to be on that Jay-Z album!’ I had no idea why Jay would be like, ‘Yeah, sure, do it.’ So Lenny S., who works with Jay, was a good friend of Oronde and Oronde’s my guy, and I said, ‘Yo, I’m gonna write this thing.’ And I wrote this long poem… a friend of mine, we wrote this long poem, we put it to a beat. Actually, it was a rap, but it didn’t sound good as a rap. […] I said, ‘Maybe I should speak this,’ because Jay might be a little more accommodating to my speaking voice. And I sent it to him and we got this text back from Jay saying, ‘I don’t love this… I f*cking love it.”

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