In a TV special from around the time of MTV Unplugged’s 2001 release, Def Jam president Lyor Cohen estimated that 80% of JAY-Z’s audience were white suburban kids. Eighty percent: That’s four out of five, a sign of just how far Jay had come in less than a decade. In some ways, Unplugged felt like a victory lap: Here was Jay, barely in his early thirties, playing his greatest hits with The Roots, the best live hip-hop group in the world. But Unplugged also marked the moment in which JAY-Z transitioned from rap hero to household name—one who could shift and shape how the world saw the art form he’d perfected. As the first rap artist given his own full-length performance on MTV’s prestigious live series, JAY-Z would prove the then-controversial idea that his platinum-selling, cash-coveting, business-minded vision of rap was just as “authentic” as the music of Unplugged predecessors Eric Clapton or Nirvana. After all, this is Jay’s life—and these are his songs. So if the performances on his Unplugged collection invert certain stereotypes of rap as being something synthetic, or somehow “false”—well, then that’s on the listener. After all, Jay’s not doing anything here he hadn’t done before—he’s just making sure the parents are hearing it as closely as their kids. And Unplugged deserves to be heard. The show captured here is great—a fluid, funny demonstration of just how progressive turn-of-the-2000s hip-hop had become, especially in terms of rhythm and accent (“Big Pimpin’”, “Can I Get A…”). And recent hits like “Takeover” and “Song Cry”—both just a few months old at the time—are nearly as good as the versions on The Blueprint. Ultimately, Unplugged points at just how varied and flexible JAY-Z’s musical approach would become. “Welcome to JAY-Z’s poetry reading,” he says in the intro—a rare moment of self-deprecation from an artist whose confidence can be almost overpowering. And yet Unplugged proves that, if Jay ever decides to give a Sinatra-style farewell concert, you get a sense of who he might call, and how it might go.