In a new interview with MTV, Jay-Z talks about his influential songwriting method, which is based on thinking of ones lyrics rather than writing them down. "I've inspired a generation of bad writers," Jay joked to MTV last week. The article goes in depth about the last song that Jay actually wrote his lyrics down for—1996's "Can I Live"—and reveals that he almost wrote the lyrics for The Black Album, but he had a hard time shaking his favored method:

"It just felt better [the way I do it now]," Jay said. "In my mind, I wanted to sit down and write and do this thing a certain way. But your natural process is your process. It's difficult to go back to what you were doing when you were 15 or 16, but my process is different [now]. It sounds great on paper, 'I'm gonna sit down and write this entire album like I did before.' But once you get back in the studio and you been doing this process for years and years, it just felt natural to do it the way I been doing it. No paper, no pen, just listen to the music and do it."

CLICK HERE to read MTV's full article.

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