JAY-Z plays two nights at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 4 and 5 September 2026, his only UK dates of the year, thirty years on from Reasonable Doubt.
Shawn Carter was born in Brooklyn in 1969 and grew up in the Marcy Projects, writing rhymes as a teenager that no label wanted. He founded Roc-A-Fella Records with two friends in order to put out Reasonable Doubt himself, in 1996, and spent the decade after it becoming the most commercially successful rapper alive: The Blueprint, The Black Album, Watch the Throne with Kanye West, 4:44. He has 25 Grammy Awards, ran Def Jam as its president, and went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.
The business is the other half of the story and he has never pretended otherwise. Roc Nation manages artists and athletes; the ventures in streaming, spirits and sport are discussed as often as the records. He set up the Shawn Carter Foundation with his mother in 2002 to put students through college, and co-founded REFORM Alliance to campaign on probation. He is married to Beyoncé.
30 marks thirty years since Reasonable Doubt, and London has the only UK dates on it: Friday 4 and Saturday 5 September 2026 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, ahead of Paris on the 10th and Los Angeles in October. The first night has sold out. It is the same ground that takes BIGBANG three weeks later and Karol G next July, which is how quickly north London has become a stadium-music address.