{"id":547466,"date":"2026-03-19T20:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/547466\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T20:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:18:11","slug":"so-long-jay-z-rapper-officially-changes-name-to-jay-z-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/547466\/","title":{"rendered":"So long, Jay-Z: Rapper officially changes name to JA\u0178-Z &#8211; National"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tDescrease article font size<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tIncrease article font size<\/p>\n<p>Hip-hop mogul <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/tag\/jay-z\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Jay-Z<\/a> is reintroducing himself as JA\u0178-Z.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/70c8fc80.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;width:1px;height:1px\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The 56-year-old rapper quietly revised the spelling of his stage name to include an umlaut over the \u201cY,\u201d in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DV_O6XrEtvT\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">an announcement<\/a> that he would perform with The Roots at their Philadelphia music festival in May.<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>JA\u0178-Z\u2019s name has also been changed on all streaming platforms \u2014 including Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube \u2014 to feature the umlaut, a punctuation mark consisting of two dots placed over a vowel to signal a change in sound.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"170\" height=\"225\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767930311_275_national.jpg\" alt=\"Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you'll never miss the day's top stories.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tGet daily National news<\/p>\n<p>Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you&#8217;ll never miss the day&#8217;s top stories.<\/p>\n<p>The name change brings back the punctuation mark first seen on the Hard Knock Life\u00a0rapper\u2019s 1996 debut album,\u00a0Reasonable Doubt, which marks its 30th anniversary this year.<\/p>\n<p>The pronunciation of his name will remain the same, as the umlaut it merely a stylistic change.<\/p>\n<p>JA\u0178-Z has changed his name before. In 2013, he got rid of the hyphen in his name.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe hyphen was really big back in the day. It\u2019s not useful anymore. You change with the times,\u201d he said during an appearance on Big Boy\u2019s Neighborhood in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-video__image\" alt=\"Click to play video: 'Blue Ivy now award-winning singer\/songwriter'\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Blue_Ivy-5dd35f162e809600014ce967_1_Nov_19_2019_3_34_44_poster.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   data-\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t0:41<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBlue Ivy now award-winning singer\/songwriter\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\tMore on Entertainment<br \/>\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>When he released his 4:44\u00a0album in 2017, he re-formatted his stage name to bring back the hyphen and appear as \u201cJAY-Z.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJay Z is now a relic of the past, consigned to the dustbin of history. In its place stands JAY-Z, now with the hyphen back in its place and the whole name in all caps,\u201d his team said in a statement at the time.<\/p>\n<p>It was recently announced that JA\u0178-Z will perform two back-to-back hometown shows at Yankee Stadium this summer. The concerts will commemorate the anniversaries of his debut album Reasonable Doubt\u00a0and his 2001 release The Blueprint, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.<\/p>\n<p>His first show is scheduled for Friday, July 10, where he\u2019ll pay homage to\u00a0Reasonable Doubt. Then on Saturday, July 11, he will return for a performance featuring hits from The Blueprint, including\u00a0Izzo (H.O.V.A.), Girls, Girls, Girls and Heart of the City (No Love).<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t&amp;copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Descrease article font size Increase article font size Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z is reintroducing himself as JA\u0178-Z. The 56-year-old&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,21617,341],"class_list":["post-547466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-jay-z","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}