Remember that time Jay-Z released a commercial with Rhapsody to promote his classic, Blueprint III album? Well if you don’t, let me be an awesome reminder: the day was September 8 and the year was 2009. Jay-Z blessed us with his 11th studio album. Shawn Carter aka Jay-Z aka Hova is the G.O.A.T fr, fr. From day one until now. Char Saint said so!

Fun fact about the art cover for the album: The cover consists of a large amount of all-white instruments and recording tools stacked in a corner, with three red lines across the image. Rather than simply using photoshop, the album’s design team carefully stacked all the equipment in a corner then used a projector to create the bars. They then painted red onto the equipment where the projection of the bars was, and replaced the projector with a camera to achieve the correct perspective for the image. Blueprint 3 would be Jay-Z’s first album cover that did not feature his face on it.