7 Radiohead 7

soundscapes—it found a way to meld this approach with
its guitar-band roots on the much-anticipated album Hail
to the Thief (2003), which reached number three on the
U.S. album charts. In 2006 Yorke, who had reluctantly
become for some the voice of his generation, collaborated
with the group’s modernist producer, Nigel Godrich, on a
solo album, The Eraser.
The band, having concluded its six-album contract
with the EMI Group in 2003, broke away from major label
distribution and initially released its seventh album, In
Rainbows (2007), via Internet download. An estimated
1.2 million fans downloaded the album within its first week
of availability, paying any price they wished to do so. The
novel distribution method generated headlines, but it was
the album’s content—a collection of 10 tracks that served
as a confident, almost optimistic, sonic counterpoint to The
Bends—that led critics to declare it the most approachable
Radiohead album in a decade.
In Rainbows was released to retailers as a standard CD
in 2008, and it immediately hit number one in both the
United States and Great Britain. The group won its third
Grammy for the album, and the In Rainbows box set, which
featured CD and vinyl copies of the original tracks, a CD
of eight bonus songs, and a booklet of original artwork,
received the Grammy for limited edition packaging.

Jay-Z

(b. Dec. 4, 1970, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.)

A

merican rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z (born Shawn
Corey Carter) was one of the most influential figures
in hip-hop in the 1990s and 2000s.
Shawn Carter grew up in Brooklyn’s often dangerous
Marcy Projects, where he was raised mainly by his mother.
His firsthand experience with illicit drug dealing would