There are few things rarer in hip-hop than a Jay-Z interview.

The 21-time Grammy winner and aspiring billionaire has transcended the status of a mere rapper, so, naturally, certain media stipulations just don’t apply to him.

The last time Jay gave an interview was when he appeared on the Rap Radar Podcast during his press run for 4:44, and that was in-house.

Now, thanks former Tonight Show host David Letterman, we’ve been blessed with another one.

The fourth episode of Letterman’s in-depth Netlfix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman, which has had guests from George Clooney to President Obama, is back with Shawn Carter as his latest guest.

The 50-minute interview which dropped on Netflix Friday touched on a myriad of topics including infidelity, his mother’s sexuality and Kanye.

Given how Jay-Z sit-downs come few and far between, I found it irresistible to bring out his most memorable moments with Letterman. A good interview leaves the viewer with new information, so here are my takeaways.

Jay-Z has always owned his music

Jay-Z to Letterman:

“I came into the game as executive producer and the owner of the label of my first album.”

Everything Jay preached on 4:44 — black entrepreneurship, financial responsibility, etc. — is the same rhetoric he’s been peddling since the beginning of his career.

Coming into Def Jam in ’97 with the savvy to sign as a partnership, become president and then to branch off to form his own shows why he’s in the position he is today.

He and Kanye are ‘beyond friends’

On the opening record of his most recent album 4:44. Jay-Z gives more attention that he normally would to anyone when he addressed his feud with Kanye West.

“You walkin’ around like you invincible / You dropped outta school, you lost your principles / I know people backstab you, I feel bad, too / But this ‘fuck everybody’ attitude ain’t natural / But you ain’t the same, this ain’t KumbaYe / But you got hurt because you did cool by ‘Ye.”

He’s speaking, of course, about Kanye spazzing out at shows back in 2016 and addressing issues between he and Jay in a public manner (which we all know you never do). Knowing this Letterman dive right in, asking if Kanye and he were friends.

Jay-Z responded:

“That’s my brother. We’re beyond friends. Like literally, my little brother is Kanye. And like your little brother, things happen sometimes.”

Jay-Z feels like “Young Forever” is unfinished

One of the things Jay-Z is known the most for is his ability to write lyrics in his head without writing them down.

Intrigued with the process, David asks Jay process and how long it can take. In explaining Hov admits that some songs never do feel finished.

Jay-Z explained,

“Forever Young took me a month to finish and it never turned out the way I wanted it. It went on to be a very successful song for me, but it still bothers me that I didn’t finish it the way I wanted to.”

The Trump administration is a good thing

If there have been any proponents to Trump, it’s defiantly been Jay-Z.

Conservative pundits like Tomi Lauren has gone after him simply for being invited to the White House and he’s always been vocal about his disdain toward his leadership.

But when talking to Letterman he did manage to find a silverzlining. I think it’s actually a great thing.” He explained:

“What he’s forcing people to do is have a conversation and people to band together and work together. Like, you can’t really address something that’s not revealed. He’s bringing out an ugly side of America that we wanted to believe was gone and it’s still here. We still gotta deal with it.”

Watch the rest on the interview on Netflix.

The plight of the creative is that they have to take up professions outside of their expertise, interests and often times their major, in order to to support themselves.

Aspiring musicians as bartenders, photographers hustling in teaching gigs, entrepreneurs at desk jobs, and etc. An artist in an office setting is a theme common to many across a variety of professions, no matter the medium. And if you look closer, you’ll see that it’s not only artists who are working two jobs either.

Last year in August, the Labor Department reported that 7.6 million workers held multiple jobs, up 2% from 7.4 million in July 2016. That’s back to back highs not seen in over 20 years.

It’s pretty much understood now — we’ll probably have to do a lot of what we don’t want to do, to get a crack at doing what we love. It’s become a part of the American work culture.

It’s easy to lose momentum. It’s easy to become fatigued. It’s easy to lose hope. Our spirits are on the line a lot of times at these day jobs, and it’s when we leave battered and broken, that we forget to clock in to a job that matters.

That’s the very reason we must learn the balance between our night and day jobs. No matter how wild or to which height our aspirations stretch, if we do not invest in the professions that edify us as much as the ones that pays the bills, we’ll be in jeopardy of losing ourselves. This is how best not to do that.

The day job

It’s easy to lose yourself in the repetition of a day job.

The process forces more hours of doing what we don’t like rather than what we do, forcing us to lose our identity along the way. Because it pays more, it ends up meaning more, and efforts that should go into creative juices, are all spent or wasted once the day’s responsibilities are fulfilled.

But a good way to prevent losing yourself in the toil of these day jobs is to view the time we spend there as time invested.

Every second we spend working a job that’s not in our career should be seen as efforts to acquire the materials it takes to continue doing what we love. It’s a perspective that can a day job go from feeling like a life sentence to a game plan.

Instead of the newest Air Jordans or festival tickets, paychecks feel more responsibly spent when it’s making that night job more realistic or bringing that entrepreneurial idea to life.

We’re not going to squander hardworking minutes on the material and temporary when we view our time spent as the means to eventually make our dreams come true.

Day jobs suck, but when we leverage them to our advantage in the way we see fit, it makes them significantly more worth while.

The night job (the side hustle)

Our night jobs are our dreams. Its what we squeeze in; what we find time for, not what we necessarily have time for.

It’s the music we never get the chance to create, the stand-up career you’ve been building; you know, the startup idea you’ve been working on for some time now.

The problem with night jobs however, is that too many times they end up being neglected. For one too many reasons, our night jobs — the jobs that can’t feed us, the jobs we would probably do for free if it came with shelter — don’t receive the intention they need and a lot of times it’s due to the day jobs that we try and balance them with.

If we spend too much energy working on someone else’s dream, we’ll end up losing focus on ours, and for many, end up losing sight of the dream completely.

You ever wonder how people get caught up in the same mediocre job for years? Those are the people who lost sight of job number two; they let the day job dominate — that cannot be you.

How to invest in yourself

Investing in yourself takes intention. It’s not enough to have the desire or to even have the vision. As time ticks, the proof in how badly you want to pursue your hearts desire will be evidenced by how much time you spend investing in whatever that dream is.

No excuse will be good enough, especially if the excuse is your day job.

We are mandated to ensure that the same amount of energy that goes into our day job is equally distributed into our night jobs. And if both our day and night jobs aren’t our dream jobs, it’s still important we figure out how to put the proper time into whatever that dream is.

We cannot go through everyday life neglecting what our purpose is. The demands of life are great, but the regret of a dream deferred is greater. There is too much time in the day to get it done. Our challenge is to figure it out.

Consider how many hours a week you devote to your day job. If it does not match what you put into your night job, then you have a problem.

Let your day job be a barometer to how much you invest into your dream. If you at least matching that effort, your life will change drastically. Trust.

None of us would have the life we have now if it went exactly the way we wanted it. For better or worse, we don’t always call the shots.

We can try our hardest, put our best foot forward, exert every ounce of our best effort and still not have a favorable outcome. That’s life.

You can call them failures, closed doors, unfortunate events or whatever makes you sleep better at night, but the truth is they’re going to come. And it’s for this reason why it’s imperative we know what and what not to do when things don’t work out.

Unprepared failures can take the wind out your sail. It can rob you of your confidence, have you second guessing yourself and even blind your with false illusions.

Suddenly, you’re not making any progress and you’re unhappy. Thoughts of if you’re good enough begin to creep in your head and everything you’ve been work on leading up to that one mistake goes out the window.

We should treat failures the way quarterbacks should treat interceptions: with short-term memory. When you hear success stories and testimonials of comebacks, they’re usually of people who’ve adapted some kind of response-method to failing — a way to use the failure for good.

It’s easy to get in a rut, but that does not mean we have to stay there. When we don’t take the failures too hard, keep the loss at minimum and allow ourselves to get better, failures wont be as scary.

Do not overquantify the failure

One of the first things we do when we mess up or when we get a “no” is let that one mishap define our entire life. Rule number one to failing is not to overquantify the failure.

When cannot dwell on the negative. While that doesn’t give us the permission to turn a blind eye to every mistake we make, our job is to accept it for what it is and move on. Nothing more, nothing less.

Whether its an emplyer saying you didn’t get the gig, a school saying you didn’t get in or an audition you didn’t land, if we give that one program all the power, we block all the countless possibilities that may be an even better fit.

Take every loss for what it is and move on. Never let a mistake ruin you.

Do not allow yourself to snowball

A lot of times when things don’t work out in our favor, or when we’ve had a perceived failure, we allow ourselves to sulk and spiral down into counterproductive decision-making.

Because we don’t know how to handle failure, we allow ourselves to think all is lost and that we no longer have anything to lose. But one step back does not mean you have to start from ground zero.

The faster we pick ourselves up, the faster we’ll be back on track. It may be discouraging and even pointless, but continuing is our only responsibility. Perfection is a myth, so we shouldn’t see one failure as conclusive.

The lie is that the journey is one without flaws. That unless it’s smooth and seamless, it isn’t right. But that’s far from the truth.

Do not rush the process

The last and equally important thing to remember when you fail is to not rush the process. You’re learning, you’re figuring things out, you’re improving. Getting mad over every fall and shortcoming is only going to frustrate you.

Egos get crushed while chasing greatness. You won’t make it if you look for a shortcut around every failure. You won’t see your dreams come true if every failure comes with impatience to learn where you went left.

Life is about trusting the process. We must understand that everything wont be for us; that, even though things may not work out one way, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, it just means that there’s something else in store for you.

When we rush the process we’ll take every failure personally instead of seeing it as development, we’ll dive into opportunities that aren’t best suited for us because we’re tired of trying, or we’ll just give up completely.

Those who win know how to fail, and that takes not giving failures too much credence, not thinking one failure has done us in and having patience.

Once we master these we’ll be prepared for failure that comes our way and ready to rebound past it.

You’re going to have to be picky about your friend group if you want to go far in life. I’m talking pretentious, Regina George, “mean girls” picky with your selection process — basically be a snob about who you surround yourself with. Often when talking about the sacrifices of success, the cold-blooded, sociopathic necessities get left out.

Yes, it’s going to take working on off days, getting up earlier, and choosing the more difficult path, but it also takes recognition of the who’s in your life and a willingness to uproot them when necessary.

We’ve heard it over and over again in a variety of ways: birds of a feather flock together, who you spend your time with you become, you are an average of the five people we spend the most time with, and so on and so forth.

But for a lot of us, these warnings are nothing more than white noise. There’s no real vetting process when it comes to the people we allow or continue to remain in our lives, and that’s half the battle when it comes to achieving success.

I think what makes adjusting our personal circle hard for a lot of us is the act of letting people go. Especially when it comes to friends, whether that individual contributes to our success our not, we want to keep them around.

In part it’s because finding people you can relate to and trust is hard, but a lot of the times it’s because we’re afraid of being alone. It all comes down to how serious we are about success and being aware of all which detracts from it.

If we treat success like professional athletes treat their bodies, we would have been cut people out of our lives. There’s an obsessive attention to detail that must take place when in pursuit of greatness that includes the people we’re close to.

If the habits don’t line up, the influence isn’t productive and the visions aren’t at least remotely parallel, an executive decision must be made.

Building a habit everyday

Expertise is achieved though consistent repetition (or as we like to call it 10K80). A habitual lifestyle allows you to hone practice so you can execute with the highest quality.

If the people you’re around enable bad habits or don’t encourage good ones, what place do they have in close proximity to you?

It doesn’t matter how long homie from grade school has had your back or how many times ol’ girl rolled one for you. The crazy times you guys shared in college and your wing-woman should fade as that lifestyle does.

If you’re chasing something bigger than anyone you know, then there are probably things you do that no one else is doing. Until you find people who assimilate to any new behavior or match your level of commitment, they’re nothing but distractions.

Appreciate them from afar and do what needs to be done to get where you need to go.

Curating the positive influences in your life

Surrounding yourself with the right people goes beyond just their habits, too.

Even after you’ve dropped the bad habits and your lifestyle change was respected, if their influence still doesn’t contribute to the bigger picture, their presence alone would still be an endangerment to how far you go in life.

Since infancy we’ve been mimicking others. We pick up on what our parents say, what our friends think is cool, and even to how we handle different situations. That doesn’t change when we’re older.

We can depend on our focus, but only for so long. When we’re lacking or when we’re feeling weak, we’re going to need the people standing next to us to give us something tangible to draw influence from. That’s not going to be your best friend who sells weed or your cousin who lives with him mom, no matter how long they’ve had your back.

We can be on point for 90 percent of the time but in moments of weakness, if our circle has nothing edifying for us, we’ll slip into a lifestyle that directly opposes where we’re supposed to be going.

What we do everyday has a direct influence on somebody. Our habits and how we go about life is impressionable. So, if you show work ethic, yet you’re only seeing laziness around you, the give and take dynamic is off balance.

How do I do this?

Having the right people in you life comes down to a decision. A decision for yourself, a decision for your future and a decision for your friends.

It doesn’t always mean shedding them or deleting phone numbers as much as it’s an effort of limiting interaction and time spent. But most importantly, it’s what you do rather than what you say.

If you’re serious about a lifestyle change and you begin moving in a way that organically limits the time you spend with an individual, it’ll be something they bring up. Then you’ll have the perfect opportunity to communicate the energy level you’re on.

What’s cool is that most times you’ll be giving space to fail — usually new lifestyles don’t stick. But when you do stick it out, they’ll either respect it and be the friend you need or emulate your focus.

It’s tough, but you have to picky about the people you’re around. You don’t deserve to be a prisoner to the friends you’ve had you’re entire life, especially if they’re holding you back. You’re not subject to loyalty when it’s not contributing to where you want to go.

It’s time for phrases like “arm sharpens arm” to be taken more than a cute antidote. It’s time that we become intentional about our personnel. Team is important; so recruit them wisely and know your circle.