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Jay-Z Honored With United Nations Humanitarian Award

October 2, 2008 2:15 PM ET

Jay-Z was presented with a United Nations special humanitarian award at a ceremony earlier this week in New York. The ceremony's host, actor Michael Douglas, presented Jigga with the award, which honored him for his raising funds and awareness for the world's water crisis. At the heart of his contributions was a 2006 world tour and MTV documentary in which Hova brought more awareness to the water epidemic and created 1,000 pumps in African communities. "If you bring awareness to young people, they're going to see and want to be involved," Jay-Z said back in 2006. "I'm not a politician; I'm just a regular person with a heart. If you see a problem like that and do nothing about it, there's something wrong with you."

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“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

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