Jay-Z sets September 18 premiere for HBO series Jay-Z In 8

Jay-Z has confirmed a September 18 premiere for Jay-Z In 8, an eight-part HBO documentary series built entirely around years of conversations with producer Rick Rubin.

A new trailer keeps the focus on Jay-Z and Rubin as they unpack the thinking behind his songs, career choices and personal history. HBO says the talks move through Jay-Z's songwriting, personal experiences, career and studio methods across the eight episodes, which come from HBO Documentary Films and Tetragrammaton, with Jay-Z, Daniel Kaluuya and Rubin serving as executive producers.

The series is built less like a standard biography and more like an extended conversation about how Jay-Z thinks through his work. "Everyone had the same experience, except I was the one that could stand on the soapbox and, like, articulate what we were going through," Jay-Z says in the teaser. Rubin, who produced "99 Problems" for The Black Album and later directed McCartney 3,2,1 for Hulu, brings his own history with Jay-Z's catalog to the conversation, at one point telling him: "Without the pain, you wouldn't have done the work."

The documentary lands during a major anniversary run for Jay-Z, who marked 30 years of Reasonable Doubt and 25 years of The Blueprint this year, and follows a three-night Yankee Stadium run that set attendance records before he added an October 24 SoFi Stadium date and further shows in London and Los Angeles. That timing gives the hip-hop documentary a current frame rather than treating his catalog only as history while the anniversary campaign remains active.

The first two episodes of Jay-Z In 8 arrive on HBO and HBO Max on September 18, with HBO rolling out two installments every Friday, spreading the full series across four weeks through October 9.