Shawn “JAY Z” Carter and comedian Jerrod Carmichael, photographed backstage after the “On The Run Tour II” show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on September 22, 2018. This image was captured by the legendary Lenny “KodakLens” Santiago, who was the one who first introduced the rap mogul and the North Carolina creative while he visited the Roc Nation offices in Midtown Manhattan in September 2016. As he told Jeff and Eric of ItsTheReal in an interview recorded a few hours later, he had rehearsed the moment he would meet Jay in his head a hundred times and was semi-considering retiring now he had done so. “This is someone who is extremely important to me … a man who I’ve listened to literally every day for 22 years,” he explained. “[Jay] was very kind, very nice … I won’t be able to articulate this feeling for another 48 hours!” As you can guess, Jerrod is a major fan of the Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder, even going so far as to say he mainly remembers 9/11 because of the it being the release date for The Blueprint in his 2014 Spike Lee-directed HBO special “Love at the Store”; and that “Jay-Z means more to me than Martin Luther King. I know every Jay-Z lyric… I only know like four bars of the “I Have a Dream” speech…” in his 2017 “8” masterpiece. In an interview with Dr. Jess Clemons the comedian explained how easy it is to connect with Jay, given how he “makes very personal, specific art to be put out into the world. [He] shows the flaws, although we feel the instinct to cover them up.” In August 2017 Carmichael played the role of “Ross” in a recreation of the Friends television show for Hov’s music video for his 4:44 track “Moonlight,” as directed by Master of None co-creator Alan Yang. Along with Issa Rae, Tiffany Haddish, Lakeith Stanfield, Lil Rel Howery and Tessa Thompson, Carmichael had a key role in recreating a few scenes from the seminal episode “The One Where No One’s Ready” and discussing the intent of the recreation in a skit with Hannibal Burress. #JAYZ #JerrodCarmichael