Jay-Z Speaks on How He Got The Nickname “One-Take HOV”

Clips of Jay-Z’s extensive interview with Gayle King of CBS Mornings has been surfacing, and a more recent segment finds Jiggaman speaking about how he got the name “One-Take Hov.”

While talking to King, Jay-Z showed the interviewer reel-to-reel tapes featured in his ‘Book of HOV’ exhibit in the Brooklyn Library. The artist explained how he got the nickname, saying, “This was when you were recording to actual tape. So, you can’t mess up, ‘cause then you got to go all the way back and cut the tape.”

Jay-Z said, “That’s where the whole ‘One-Take HOV’ came from. Because if you wanted a fly chorus on this thing, you had to go to dinner. It took an engineer hours to cut the tape… fly it over here… So I start learning my lyrics really good so I could do them one time—you understand—straight down, and I didn’t waste time.”