Jay-Z says he nearly quit rap in the documentary series Jay-Z in 8

Jay-Z in 8 began on HBO on Friday 18 September with two episodes, and two more arrive every week until the eight are done. The format is simple enough: Jay-Z and Rick Rubin work through more than 25 songs from a three-decade catalogue, using each one as a way into what was happening around it.

The most surprising thing in the opening pair is how little he wanted the job. Rapping, he tells Rubin, did not look like a dream from where he was standing in the early 1990s, because "rappers were pulling up in turtle tops and minivans" while he and the people around him were already driving 4Runners, Lexuses and Acuras. Signing a deal read as a step backwards.

Even after Reasonable Doubt he expected to leave. He says he planned to become a Russell Simmons-type executive rather than a performer, because he did not love being an artist: "I didn't like shooting videos, didn't like doing interviews," he says, adding that he did not like speaking either. He stayed anyway, which is the joke the whole series rests on.

Some of the material is closer to the songs. He names the intro to The Dynasty as his favourite of all his album intros, and explains that a line about the only Psalms he read being on his friends' arms was a direct reference to Biggie and Junior M.A.F.I.A., who all had the same scripture tattooed. He also describes how he and Biggie became close after recording Brooklyn's Finest and going to see The Kings of Comedy afterwards, and that Biggie wanted the two of them to move to Atlanta and live near each other.

One editorial decision from that session has not been public before. Jay says he cut a Biggie line referencing Carolina from Brooklyn's Finest because he felt it fanned the East Coast and West Coast feud he did not want to be part of, a small act of self-censorship in 1996 that reads very differently now. We covered the announcement of the HBO premiere date and the trailer for the eight-part series earlier this month, and the series sits alongside the rest of the hip-hop documentaries we are tracking.