BROOKLYN, N.Y. — "SEE, that's Fort Greene right there, the projects, and I went to school right here -- this is George Westinghouse," says Jay-Z, looking through the window of his gray Rolls-Royce as it chauffeurs him into his past.
"Marcy Projects is about five minutes straight down," he says, pointing east toward the housing development where he lived as a youth. "See that? That's one thing I liked about going to school here," he adds with a smile, indicating a road sign that reads "Jay St."
Jay-Z, 37, doesn't return often to this Brooklyn neighborhood, where he grew up as Shawn Corey Carter. Stardom and wealth have taken him away to a Manhattan home and the globe-trotting life of a hip-hop star and major-label record executive.
It's his role as a recording artist that's brought him back on a warm fall day, to rehearse for a taping of the "VH1 Storytellers" show on a soundstage at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. As the car inches through late afternoon traffic, past the courts where he used to play basketball and the corners where he once sold drugs, he finds that his emotions are stirred.
"Yeah, man, it's the place that made me," he says softly.
As it happens, Jay-Z's physical homecoming parallels the artistic journey he made on his new album, "American Gangster," which comes out Tuesday.
Until recently, he had no plans to make a record, but when he got an early look at the movie "American Gangster," starring Denzel Washington as 1970s Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, he was immediately inspired to create an album based on the film.
Sort of.
"The album is not about the film," explains the rapper, who completed the collection in a typically fast three weeks. "It connected with me on an emotional level. It was so similar to the neighborhoods that I came up in, and things that happened there. And Denzel's character as well . . . you know, his laid-back persona, that's pretty much how I am.
"It's really about the emotions of that life. I would take an emotion that I felt was important, or things that resonated with me . . . and make a song.
"But none of the emotions are current emotions. I mean, success is, because that's the thing that I've dealt with, but none of the songs are currently how I feel now. . . . It's like writing a book, going back to all these things, these emotions that I thought were buried. Because as a person you grow and you add layers on who you become. So I never thought that I would get back to that place.
