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An apartment at a Brooklyn address made famous by Jay-Z has hit the market, according to an article in the New York Post.
The two-bedroom apartment at 560 State St. #3B in the Boerum Hill neighborhood — and in the building eulogized by the rapper as his former “stash spot” in his 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind” — is listed for $1.4 million, the article notes.
“I used to cop in Harlem, all of my Dominicanos / Right there up on Broadway, pull me back to that McDonald’s / Took it to my stash spot, 560 State Street / Catch me in the kitchen like a Simmons with them pastries,” the artist born Shawn Carter rapped alongside Alicia Keys in the chart-topping song.
Jay-Z lived in the apartment building between late 1996 and 1997, residing either in unit 10B or 10C. At the time, the building was home to a community of Black artists and musicians.
Moving from his home neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant to the luxury apartment building made the young Jay-Z feel like he had “made it,” he said in a 2019 video of him revisiting the building.
He also said that he shared the apartment with his cousin, who he eventually had a falling out with because of the drug deals he was involved with, leading Jay-Z to eventually leave selling drugs behind and fully embrace music.
“But I knew something wasn’t right about the things I was doing,” he said in the video. “My conscience was alive. So I just decided to let that street life go and just really focus on music. This is what I love to do. If I had my choice to be successful — to be successful in the street or be successful making music, it would be making music.”
“So let me treat it like that and give it my all,” he continued. “And when I did, it happened pretty much right away for me.”
He also noted that despite the description in his song, he never actually used the address as a stash spot.
“It wasn’t actually a stash spot,” he said. “But we were doing all kinds of stuff here that we shouldn’t have been doing.”
Jay-Z has come a long way from his apartment overlooking the future site of the Barclays Center. Last week, he and Beyonce shelled out $200 million for their new oceanfront home in Malibu — the most expensive home ever purchased in California. He was also declared the best rapper of all time by Billboard in 2022 and became the first billionaire rapper in 2019.
Unit 3B at 560 State Street is described as a “sun-filled duplex” with an open floor plan and spacious living room. Residents of the building enter through a common courtyard which was designed by landscape architects, the listing description notes.
The unit last sold in 2017 for $1,016,000 after listing for $1,039,000, according to StreetEasy.
The listing is held by Corcoran.
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