It's minutes to midnight in Manhattan and we're up by Central Park, at the Trump International, in a fifth-floor suite done in shades of beige. Jay-Z and eight friends are sitting around a table in the living room playing Guts, their favorite card game. Jay's sixth album, The Blueprint, booms from the stereo. His companions are streetwise young men and execs from Def Jam, his record label. Everyone is cracking jokes, laughing, trying not to show fear, as crisp hundreds fly around the room in the high-stakes poker game that's all about balls.

Jay is in a white T-shirt, baggy Rocawear bluejeans and new blue shell-toes, the laces running through every other hole. The thirty-one-year-old is tall and lanky, with large, round lips; long, curled lashes; and a cool that's unshakable. A close friend said he's "comfortable in his own skin," and Jay seems to take everything in stride.

Guts is deceptively simple. Each player is dealt three cards, facedown. You examine your hand - aces are high, pairs preferred - then decide whether to stay in the game. Everyone who stays in turns over his cards. The best hand wins the pot. Each of the losers replenishes it. At midnight the pot is $2,060; by 2 a.m. it will be $4,000.

Guts is all about poker faces, reading people and having the cojones to not care about losing thousands of dollars in a few seconds. All night long, the wall of hundreds in front of Jay remains three to four inches tall - about $30,000 - and he seems unafraid of losing. You might be, too, if you were worth "north of $50 million," as Lyor Cohen, the president of Island Def Jam Music Group and one of tonight's players, estimates. But friends say Jay has always been fearless; that fearlessness itself is the reason he's worth north of $50 million. Other men's piles rise and fall wildly - in two hours I went from winning $2,000 to owing $4,000 to profiting $3,000 - but Jay's stacks are consistent because he's less focused on cards than on character, keeping you from predicting him and reading you perfectly.

"That's me in life," Jay says later. "I really have a feel for people. I can read people. I know people." In the next hand, Jay's got good cards, but Cohen calls "Guts." "What?!" Jay says. "I know Lyor doesn't like risk. He doesn't cross the street if it doesn't say walk." Jay drops out. He takes the joint that's going around: "This gon' really give me a cool face." He takes a pull. Lyor wins the hand. By dropping out, Jay saves $2,800.

All night long, "the blue-print" plays on repeat. Jay's 1996 debut,Reasonable Doubt, was a classic, art for art's sake: the street stories of a man unaffected by the business of hip-hop, out to prove he was the number-one MC. In My Lifetime, Volume I, his second classic, from 1997, was filled with bright, pop-y hits and hardcore street anthems, and showed his knack for delivering the sounds people wanted to hear. Now, with The Blueprint, his third classic, he's just playing for the love of the game, with nothing to prove. The album mixes his trademark conversation-chill flows with samples of Seventies bluesy soul, disco and hard rock - the sounds of his youth, the blueprint of his musical education. "These aren't the exact records I grew up on," he says, "but it has that feel. And it made me vibe; it brought back memories. I felt comfortable recording."

For The Blueprint, he wrote and recorded nine songs in an inspired two-day stretch. "The songs just started happenin', comin' out of nowhere," he says. "I was in a zone." Jay's recording process itself is a bit miraculous. He picks a track, turns it up loud in the studio, then sits off to the side mumbling to himself. In minutes he's got rhymes and hooks with astounding economy and filled with his trademark double-entendres. Instantly memorized. No pen, no paper. Sometimes, he says, there are four or five songs in his head at one time. Rapper Beanie Sigel has learned to do this from being around Jay, and says it's made him a better MC. "It make your flow so wicked," Sigel says. "Without the pen and paper, your flow be so ridiculous." Adds Jay, "What I have is a gift from God. It can't be explained." This is what he means when he calls himself the God MC and Jay-Hovah.

After six albums filled with the chilly world-weariness of an O.G., rhymes complex enough to lend Shakespearean gravitas to the scene and his monumental self-assuredness, Jay-Z is one of the best MCs of all time, and certainly the best alive and working. As Ahmir Thompson, drummer for the Roots, says, "Rakim is the Father, Biggie's the Son and Jay-Z's the Holy Ghost."

Jay-Z himself brushes off the issue of who's the best MC. "I can't get into that argument," he says, "because the people at the top of the game are no longer here with us. Big and 'Pac didn't really get a chance to grow as artists. We never got to see where it woulda went. But I always felt that's what I was comin' to do, to be the best. I wasn't comin' in the game to be nothin' less."

At the Trump, as the night goes on, Jay munches a Caesar salad, smokes a cigar and lets slip a few details from his recent life. "He has nearly the same lifestyle as a billionaire," says Cohen, "except he doesn't have a wing of a museum named after him." Jay rides in chauffeured cars and flies in private planes and helicopters. One recent weekend, he zipped from the recording studio to the boxing gym, then from the U.S. Open final between Serena and Venus Williams to the Felix Trinidad fight to a meeting about his work on the director's cut of the film Scarface. He's executive-producing the soundtrack, supervising the music and doing the score for the 2002 release.

Another weekend, he flew to Chicago to spend time with Michael Jordan. "We just really sat down and kicked it like gentlemen," he says. "I was like, 'Dawg, I'm-a ask you everythin'. I'm comin' right at you.' He was like, 'Man, you could ask me anything.' " When he returned to Manhattan, he went to the studio to rhyme on Michael Jackson's "You Rock My World" remix. "I was talkin to him on the phone, and he was talkin' about 'Hard Knock Life,' and he was like, 'You was just so in pocket on that record, landin' right on the beat. Incredible.' I'm like, 'Thanks.' But I'm lookin' at the phone like, 'What? Stop playin', man!' " Jay says. "Mike was a superhero when I was a kid. Him wantin' to work with me, period, was bananas!"

Then there was a summer weekend at his place in East Hampton, Long Island. Every forty-five minutes, his chef, Cynthia, emerged from the kitchen with something new - French waffles with blueberries, jumbo fried shrimp, barbecue wings, banana daiquiris, homemade thick-crust pizza, candy salad, figs, mojitos, lobster with special sauce. "You gotta hide from her," Jay says. "She'll feed you nonstop." Manicurists and masseuses dropped by. Supermodels Carmen Kass, Leilani and Noemi are regular guests. So was Aaliyah. Two weeks before her death in a plane crash in the Bahamas, she and her boyfriend, Roc-A-Fella Records president Damon Dash, visited Jay in the Hamptons. "He is the sweetest person," she said. "I have so much fun when I'm with him." Her voice was soft and delicate, her eyes hidden under a large hat. "I admire him because he's an amazing talent, and on top of that he's a beautiful person. He's really good people."

The day she died, Dash paged Jay 911. "We don't call each other 911, so I knew it was serious," Jay says. "I didn't really wanna call back for a second. I'm goin' over all kinda things in my mind, tryin' to pinpoint what could be wrong. Finally, I said fuck it and I called him and he told me, and I just went over to be with him, 'cause I knew he was gonna go through it."

In October, Jay-Z, surprisingly, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in the third degree for the 1999 stabbing of record executive Lance "Un" Rivera. Jay had long planned to plead not guilty. His attorney, Murray Richman, said the district attorney's office was pursuing the case only because it had lost the Puffy trial. "It's a bullshit charge," Richman said before the trial. "I examined Un in a deposition where he said he wasn't sure Jay was even close by. He said, 'Jay was not that close, but I recognized Jay, so I said it was Jay. I was down on the floor. I didn't even see who came in close to me.' How bullshit is that?" The DA's office declined comment.

Jay was nervous about going to trial. "Where I grew up, I seen a lot of people get wronged," he said a few weeks before the trial. "No matter how much you believe in the truth, that's always in the back of your mind." Richman, always combative, was looking forward to fighting the charge. "They made us an offer," he said. "No jail and five years' probation. But he's not guilty!"

At the last minute, much to Richman's chagrin, Jay changed his plea and received three years' probation. Afterward, Richman was seething. "Everybody's a tough guy," is all he would say.

What does that mean? "You figure it out."

After September 11th, Jay donated money to the victims' families and the fire department but was torn over whether he should donate to the police department, which he said has continually followed him through the city, looking for a reason to arrest him. "I'm conflicted through all this," he said. "I feel sorry for everybody. I got empathy, compassion, I'm really sick. Same time, this is still a land that's not really for my people, and I can't just forget that. I wanna say that during this so no one else forgets." He ended up donating to the police department as well.

Back at the trump, it's a little past three and I've got a pair of nines. That's a good hand. The pot is $2,500. Four men drop out, then Jay calls "Guts." It's just me and him. I stare Jay in the eye. I know I'm gonna win. He gives me an ice-grill - a steely poker face with a cold glint in his eye - not intimidating but unflinching. A lot of money is on the table.

"If I beat you, I'm gonna put it in the article," I say.

"But will you put it in if you lose?"

He looks confident, but I know that when he's unnerved, he just doesn't let you know. "Guts," I say.

I flip my cards. He looks at them nonchalantly, says, "Hmm," and scoops up the pile of cash. I reach for his cards: two jacks, known in this room as two Jiggas. Across the table, he's carefully stacking his money, not gloating at all, as though he knew he'd win all along.

As Jay shuffles the cards, "Momma Loves Me" comes on. It's a hip-hop ballad in which he shares impressions of his life from childhood to the present, starting at the beginning: "Momma love me/Pop left me."

Mom and Pop are Gloria and Adnes Carter - Lou-Lou and AJ. "My pops did anything from cabdriver to truck driver to working at the phone company. My mom works in investments for the city." Jay grew up in Brooklyn's Marcy Projects with his older brother, Eric, and his older sisters, Annie and Mickey. "One day when I was four years old," he says, "I rode this ten-speed. It was really high, but I put my foot through the top bar, so I'm ridin' the bike kinda weird, like sideways, and the whole block is like, 'Oh, God!' They couldn't believe this little boy ridin' that big bike like that. That was my first feelin' of bein' famous right there. And I liked it. Felt good."

His parents had a giant record collection, with their names taped onto every single album. "These people shared everything," he says, "but not those records. It was like, 'This is my son and your son. This is my house and your house. But this is my record.' That's just to show you how much they loved their music."

Every day there was music, especially Saturday, when his mom would open the windows and Pine-Sol the house down while blasting her favorite funk and soul. Eventually it started to pour out from him. "After a while, I just started tryin' to write rhymes. I used to be at the table every day for hours. I had this green notebook with no lines in it, and I used to write all crooked. I wrote every damn day. Then I started running around in the streets, and that's how not writing came about. I was comin' up with these ideas, and I'd write 'em on a paper bag, and I had all these paper bags in my pocket, and I hate a lot of things in my pocket, so I started memorizing and holding it."

In the sixth grade, a test showed he was reading at a twelfth-grade level. "I was crazy happy about that," he says. "When the test scores came back, that was the first moment I realized I was smart. I always liked to read. I still do." He recently read the spiritual tomes The Celestine Prophecies, The Prophet and Conversations With God.

When Jay was about eleven, his dad left the house, and it devastated him. "I look just like the guy," he says. "You wanna walk like him, talk like him. That's your superman right there. And then there's no more contact with him. The scorn, the resentment, all the feelings from that - as you see, I'm a grown-ass man and it's still there with me." AJ took his records with him, but Jay's musical education continued. "I think my mom had better records," he says.

His mom is one of Jay's best friends, someone he can talk to about anything, at any time: "If I get an idea, a flashback, I'll call her. Three in the mornin': 'You remember when I was four years old, and I learned how to ride a bike, and . . .' She'll get right into the conversation."

The relationship goes both ways. "I'm like my mom's husband," he says. "I'm a very good friend to her." He says he pulls the ends together for his family, like a father would. "I'm really the dude in the family," he says. "And I wanna be that. I take care of everybody, and they love me and respect me for that. But they don't kiss my ass or treat me any different because of it. That's the beauty of it."

Suddenly, from out of the Trump stereo comes "Takeover," a grinding hip-hop-rock anthem, on which he disses both Nas and Mobb Deep rapper Prodigy: "Went from Nasty Nas to Esco's trash/Had a spark when ya started but now you're just garbage."

"I ain't really hit Nas that hard," Jay says, with comic understatement. "I gave him a break. He lucky." Damon Dash says it's rare for anyone in their crew to tease Jay because his comebacks are too harsh. They call him "Jay-Jugular." After "Takeover," we all understand.

Jay says Nas has been throwing darts at him on mix tapes for years. They spoke on the phone once, and Jay thought things were cool between them. Then he heard Nas dissing him on the radio in L.A. Prodigy, Jay says, called him a bitch in The Source. They ran into each other at Puffy's restaurant, Justin's, and squashed it, but Prodigy kept going at Jay on mix tapes.

"Everybody wants to be respected," he says. "Even if we're not friends, we gotta respect each other. And I felt I was bein' disrespected by them, so I had to show them. And I really waited it out because I didn't want people to think I was a bully. Because I have the ear of a lot more people than them. You have to be very careful with that power. It wasn't a bully move. It was, 'Keep goin'. Keep goin'. Keep goin'. OK, now you gotta respect me.' I'm sure they respect me right now." Nas and Prodigy declined comment.

"Takeover" is one of the illest battle records in hip-hop history, but now you can't hear a battle record without fearing the worst. This is hip-hop. Someone could get killed. "I definitely think pride's on the line," Jay says, "but I'm not dealin' with emotion. I'm not upset. My feelings was not hurt. With me, it's all music. If you ever hear anything happen with me, it was purely 170 percent self-defense, because to me it's records. Once it's on records, it's a joke to me. You can't really be mad, you can't really wanna do somethin' to me, or you wouldn't put it on a record for the whole world to hear."

At five minutes to five, the guts game is finally winding down. But some people can never get enough. Kevin Liles, the president of Def Jam, a Buddha-shaped man brimming with ego in an orange Phat Farm shirt, challenges Jay to a single hand for $10,000. Someone suggests they do it for a million. Jay says no. "Ten thousand dollars ain't gon' make a nigga sick," he says. "A million'll make a nigga sick."

The room assembles around the table. Jay sits back in his chair. He's calm. Liles flips over Jay's first card. A queen. Liles gets a two. Jay yells a little bit. His next card is a king. He bangs the table. It's getting hot in here. Liles gets a three. Jay's ahead, but it's still anyone's game. The next card, to Jay, is . . . a queen. He wins. The table flips over, the room goes nuts, a riot ensues. Jay stands on his chair yelling like he's nailed a three-pointer to win the game, smacking five hard with everyone in the room. "I bodied him!" Jay yells. It's the most emotion he's shown all night.

Jay struts out the room at a quarter past five with his money in his hand, fingers stretching to hold onto his five-inch stack. He says he made $30,000 tonight. Whether hustling or rhyming or playing Guts for big cheddar, where others lose their head, Jay-Z keeps his. "We introduced the game to Will Smith and them in Aspen," he says, stepping from the elevator, struggling to stuff the money in his pockets. "Now they do Guts tournaments. They can't stop. This game'll claim your life."

[From Issue 883/884 — December 6, 2001]