Our current issue, Q304, is an extra-special one: it's our 25th birthday.
To mark the occasion the magazine boasts 25 different covers featuring 25 different acts who are currently shaping music.
Each day, we've been printing an exclusive extract from one of the 25 cover interviews, today we turn to our bonus Jay-Z cover which was sent exclusively to subscribers (although you can read the interview with the rapper in all versions of Q304).
Introducing the issue Jay-Z explains while music was a big influence on his career, his neighbourhood shaped him as an artist.
"The other great influence on me wasn't even music, it was what I saw around me," he explains. "When I grew up in Macy crack cocaine was endemic. Now two ways about it. It ruled the streets. You either used it or you controlled it. We all seen Scarface, right? Well that tells you all you need to know. With drugs you are trying to get out by using them and falling deeper into that hole that you climb out from.
"I think films are a major influence on any rapper. One of the ways you deal with your surroundings is almost to imagine you are in a dram on the big screen. It sound crazy but I can help you survive to see yourself in terms if a story. You could write a whole book on what hip hop has taken from The Godfather, Scarface and all those gangster films."
That's it for our exclusive cover story extracts from Q304. Join us tomorrow (24 October) for the small matter of the Q Awards which are taking place in London. Follow all the action live.
To get your favourite cover head to Greatmagazines.co.uk/Q25 and grab the artists of your choice while stocks last.
10:00 AM | 23/10/2011
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