Jay-Z Puts Three Decades After He Sold It Out of a Car

“In My Lifetime,” the song that started Roc-A-Fella, hit streaming on July 26, the same date it was reissued in 1995.

“In My Lifetime” is JAY-Z’s debut single, produced by Ski, with its hook built from an interpolation of Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)” and “Get a Life.” A separate version, the Big Jaz Radio Remix, loops Aretha Franklin’s “Oh Baby,” a track off her 1974 album Let Me In Your Life, across nearly the entire production rather than just the hook. It first came out through Roc-A-Fella Records as an independent release in 1994, before Payday Records and FFRR reissued it on July 26, 1995. In its earliest form, the white label pressing was sold directly by Jay-Z and Damon Dash out of Dash’s car, a detail that has followed the song into most retellings of how Roc-A-Fella actually got started. The track never appeared on either of Jay-Z’s first two studio albums, though a remix by Big Jaz later turned up on the soundtrack to the film Streets Is Watching.

Making the song available on Spotify, Apple Music and TIDAL on July 26, 2026 lines the streaming debut up exactly with that 1995 reissue date, thirty one years apart. The listing on Apple Music files it as a two song single, and on TIDAL it arrives under the JAŸ-Z name, the umlaut spelling he used at the time of Reasonable Doubt before dropping it from later releases.

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The streaming roll did not happen in isolation. It follows a string of moves tied to the thirtieth anniversary of Jay-Z’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt, which was released by Roc-A-Fella in June 1996. Earlier in the year, the original version of “Dead Presidents” went to streaming for the first time alongside limited vinyl, cassette and CD pressings sold through Jay-Z’s own site. Target followed with an exclusive anniversary edition of the album itself, available starting June 26 with new packaging and versions of select tracks that had not previously appeared in that format. Jay-Z also readopted the JAŸ-Z spelling across his socials and merchandise, mirroring how his name was styled on the original Reasonable Doubt pressing.

The rollout has carried into live performances as well. Jay-Z headlined The Roots Picnic in Philadelphia on May 30, his first festival date in years and his first public show since a surprise appearance alongside Beyonce during the Paris stop of her Cowboy Carter tour the previous summer. Roc Nation then announced a two night stand at Yankee Stadium: a July 10 show billed as the Reasonable Doubt thirtieth anniversary celebration, followed by a July 11 show marking twenty five years since The Blueprint. Taken together with “In My Lifetime” landing on streaming, the pattern points to an anniversary campaign built less around a single announcement and more around a steady drip of catalog moves through the year, treating Jay-Z’s pre-Reasonable Doubt material as part of the same story as the album itself.

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None of it has come with confirmation of new original material. Speculation about a full new project has followed Jay-Z through much of the campaign, fueled partly by a freestyle at The Roots Picnic that fans read as pointed commentary aimed at other artists, but nothing beyond archival rel and live dates has been confirmed as of this writing. For now, the closest thing to new Jay-Z music in 2026 is old Jay-Z music, restored to circulation in the format his career could eventual make standard.