The New York Public Library has publishedan un-retouched, un-Photoshopped photo from 1939 that features a guy who looks remarkably like Jay-Z.
“I was immediately struck by the similarity to Jay-Z and actually laughed out loud," said Sylviane A. Diouf, who is Curator of Digital Collections at the Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture and found the photo. "I still hope somebody will tell us who that young man really was."
The library said the image, “Harlem Loiterers” by street photographer Sid Grossman, "created quite a stir" since being posted on Schomburg’s Facebook page the other day.
Shawn Corey Carter grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
According to a biography written by Jason Birchmeier, the moniker Jay-Z is an homage to his musical mentor, Jaz-O, as well as to the J/Z subway lines in Brooklyn.
Here's Jay-Z aka Hova:
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