In honor of his current gigantic pr campaign including shows and a documentary with some of these names as guests, let's look back on a career full of global smashes by celebrating the ones he got all by himself. He swears he makes careers instead of leeching off them, and even his wife's haters insist he is instrumental to her success so there should be plenty of examples!

I'll start with the only answer

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Holy Grail

Hard Knock Life is probably the only one that's solo

2 minutes ago, prézli said:

Holy Grail

This is kinda a spill.

Outside of the names in the op, he's always willing to sell legitimacy to culture vultures for a check if it will chart. Oh global-z

Numb/Encore?

I was gonna say 99 problems but I guess that was only big in the US and the UK

Edited September 16Sep 16 by glitch

Hard Knock Life was playing a lot on the radio when I was a child.

Big Pimpin

Dirt of your Shoulder

99 Problems

Tom Ford, Dirt Off Your Shoulders, 99 Problems and Hard Knock Life are all solo

Plus Young Forever and Numb/Encore

I mean yeah he's not the biggest hitmaker ever but it's not like he's a complete flop either. What he did with his career goes way beyond his musical output

4 minutes ago, Airhead said:

Big Pimpin

Dirt of your Shoulder

99 Problems

None of these songs even topped the rap charts of their era in the US. We're orders of magnitude away from hits like In Paris or CIL.

Edited September 16Sep 16 by Sheep

Chartbreaker by Moo ft. Bey-Z

Every song named so far in this thread combined likely have less views than Accelerate by Xtina

OT: I'm not sure very honestly I checked his top songs on spotify and the entire top 10 is collabs

name 5 Jay z songs gun pointin to your head

Baow, I'm dead.

8 minutes ago, lgaga1fan said:

Every song named so far in this thread combined likely have less views than Accelerate by Xtina

OT: I'm not sure very honestly I checked his top songs on spotify and the entire top 10 is collabs

No shade to Xtina but Jay has more solo songs with 300M+ streams on Spotify than she does

tom ford was kinda huge in the clubs back in 2013-2016

Next thread idea: Name a global JAŸ-Z hit without Justin Timberlake, Linkin Park, or Alicia Keys

Yes I know hip-hop is fundamentally more collaborative than pop music don't @ me

1 minute ago, Peak Now said:

Yes I know hip-hop is fundamentally more collaborative than pop music don't @ me

Is it though? Even our favs that are known for singular control like Taylor and Gaga still end up crediting like 10 people on most songs if you read the full credits and not just writer + producer. This always ironically felt like a weird way to dismiss the individual creative strength of rappers to me. Drake and Ye both have all of their biggest hits being solo efforts and their names both pop up all over the credits too.

Edited September 16Sep 16 by Sheep

New York

Solange

22 minutes ago, lonnie said:

No shade to Xtina but Jay has more solo songs with 300M+ streams on Spotify than she does

well.

can only think of the Linkin Park collabs he did for that EP

45 minutes ago, Sheep said:

None of these songs even topped the rap charts of their era in the US. We're orders of magnitude away from hits like In Paris or CIL.

And that's crazy because they were massive in Europe

His solo music sucks compared to his rap peers. He raps like a 13 year old at a school talent show. He's like DJ Khaled, no one's checking for his music if he's alone

10 minutes ago, Joesuxx said:

And that's crazy because they were massive in Europe

Those are global chart runs