JAY-Z grew up as the youngest of four siblings in Brooklyn

JAY-Z’s life has changed drastically since growing up in a Brooklyn housing project, but one constant has been his bond with his three siblings.

Born to Gloria Carter and Adnis Reeves on Dec. 4, 1969, the rapper, né Shawn Carter, is the youngest of four children, including his brother Eric, and sisters Andrea and Michelle. JAY-Z grew up with his older siblings in Brooklyn living alongside their extended family in his grandmother’s row house before moving to a public housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant at age 5.

“Looking back, I guess it was quite dysfunctional,” he told Oprah Winfrey of his early family life in a candid 2009 O Magazine interview. “But I didn’t have that feeling until I got into my early teen years, when we were living in the Marcy projects. That’s when crack hit my neighborhood hard and I started getting into mischief,” he explained.

His father moved out when the future Grammy winner was 11 years old, leaving Gloria, who worked as an investment company clerk, to raise four kids on her own. JAY-Z has described her as his only positive Black role model, telling Winfrey that she worked hard to support their family. “She worked two jobs and did whatever she had to do for us,” JAY-Z said.

While he rarely talks about his siblings in interviews, JAY-Z has given insight into their close bond through his lyrics on multiple occasions.

Here is everything to know about JAY-Z’s three siblings, Eric, Andrea and Michelle, and their relationship with the rapper.

Two of his siblings are step-siblings

Annie Carter, Gloria Carter, Hattie Carter and Michelle Carter in 2013.MIKE COPPOLA/WIREIMAGE

To JAY-Z, family is family. There’s no distinction between half- or step-siblings, or siblings-in-law. The rapper once referred to his wife Beyoncé’s sister Solange as his own sister: “That’s my sister, not my sister-in-law,” he said on Rap Radar. “My sister. Period.”

Two of JAY-Z’s older siblings — brother Eric and sister Andrea — share a different father than he and Michelle, as Gloria welcomed them during a previous relationship. JAY-Z has rapped about the importance of feeling like a united family, and how he admired that his dad treated each of his siblings as his own child.

On “Adnis,” a bonus cut featured on his 13th studio album 4:44 released in June 2017, JAY-Z raps: “Started a good man, you married my mama / I was in her belly, you hurried that summer / She had two kids from a previous mister / One family, I don’t believe in half-sisters / Never treated my brother like a step, Pop / Remembered the many lessons when we stepped out.”

They grew up in Brooklyn

JAY-Z and his siblings grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Early on, they lived with their paternal grandmother and extended family in a three-story row house. At age 5, JAY-Z and his family moved to the Marcy projects. The rapper and Eric, four years his senior, shared a room. The complex was crowded, with “people to the left of you, right of you, top, on top and on the bottom of you,” JAY-Z recounted to Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. “It’s a very intense and stressful situation.”

But even given the literal closeness with his family and their neighbors, JAY-Z still has fond memories of his early childhood. “Everyone is going through different things, and in between all that stress and angst and, you know, having to deal with one another in such close proximity, there’s so much love,” he told Gross.

While they didn’t have much money, the “Empire State of Mind” rapper didn’t realize they were poor until his early teens. “We didn’t have elaborate meals, but we didn’t go without,” JAY-Z told Winfrey. “We ate a lot of chicken,” he said, adding that he can only eat it in small doses now as a result. “We had so much chicken — chicken backs, chicken everything. To this day, I can only eat small pieces or else I feel funny.”

JAY-Z’s happy memories of his childhood break off around his early teens, when the crack epidemic took hold of the neighborhood during the 1980s and the Marcy housing project became a hotspot of violence. “Guns were everywhere,” JAY-Z recounted to The Guardian in 2010, and the complex became a less-than-stable environment for JAY-Z and his siblings. “Navigating this place was life-or-death,” he told Winfrey.

They were raised in a religious household

JAY-Z and his siblings were raised in a strictly Christian household while living with their paternal grandparents, Adnis and Ruby Reeves (JAY-Z’s dad, also named Adnis, went by AJ, for Adnis Junior).

Adnis Sr. preached at a local Pentecostal church, where Ruby was also a deaconess, according to Mark Beaumont’s 2012 biography Jay Z: The King of America.

Their dad left at an early age

JAY-Z in 2021.KARWAI TANG/WIREIMAGE

AJ left the family when JAY-Z was 11 years old — a traumatic event that the rapper has openly discussed in his lyrics and in interviews through the years.

“We were told our parents would separate, but the reasons weren’t explained,” he told Winfrey. “My mom prepared us more than he did. I don’t think he was ready for that level of discussion and emotion. He was a guy who was pretty detached from his feelings.”

The upheaval left him full of anger, JAY-Z added, saying his dad had been his “superhero.”

“Once you’ve let yourself fall that in love with someone, once you put him on such a high pedestal and he lets you down, you never want to experience that pain again,” the rapper told Winfrey of closing himself off emotionally after AJ’s departure. “So I remember just being really quiet and really cold. Never wanting to let myself get close to someone like that again. I carried that feeling throughout my life, until my father and I met up before he died,” JAY-Z said.

In his father’s absence, JAY-Z felt increasingly “protective” of his mom. “I remember telling her, ‘Don’t worry, when I get big, I’m going to take care of this.’ I felt like I had to step up. I was 11 years old, right? But I felt I had to make the situation better,” he added.

Their dad died in 2003

AJ died of liver failure in June 2003, just months after reconnecting with JAY-Z on Gloria’s request. Leading up to their reconciliation, the Tidal founder was able to come to terms with his father’s abandonment by understanding the problems AJ had faced throughout his life.

“My dad was in so much pain that he started using drugs and became a different person,” JAY-Z told Winfrey. “So I understand that the trauma … coupled with the drugs, caused him to lose his soul.”

In his 2011 memoir, Decoded, JAY-Z revealed that he later found out his siblings had known that his father was living just 10 minutes away after he left the family.

“He tried to hit me with excuses,” JAY-Z wrote of their reconciliation talk. “He said my sister Annie knew where he was, that my brother Eric had been to visit him,” he added, writing that he reminded his dad that it was his responsibility as the parent to reach out to his child — not the other way around. “He finally broke down and admitted he was wrong. He said he was sorry,” JAY-Z wrote.

They have largely stayed out of the spotlight

Beyonce and Michelle Carter.JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGE

JAY-Z’s brother and sisters have kept their lives private, opting to avoid social media and interviews altogether.

The rapper has also rarely shared details about them publicly: In a 2005 Rolling Stone profile, it was noted that Eric was living in upstate New York at the time, while Michelle, who goes by Mickey, was employed by JAY-Z’s Rocawear clothing brand.

Andrea, known as Annie, was working as a corrections officer at Rikers Island jail in New York. “She’s tough,” JAY-Z said of his eldest sibling.

They have supported him at public events

Eric Carter, Beyonce and JAY-Z.JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGE

Despite keeping low profiles, JAY-Z’s family has joined him at a number of events throughout his career. When he opened the 40/40 Club, a famed nightclub that closed its flagship Manhattan location in 2023, his mom and sister Michelle were in attendance to celebrate. Both posed for photos with Beyoncé, whom JAY-Z had been dating for a few years.

His brother Eric showed support a few years later, posing alongside JAY-Z and Beyoncé when the rapper celebrated the first anniversary of the 40/40 Club in Las Vegas.

Michelle has been spotted the most often at his events, including a Rocawear pool party hosted by the “’03 Bonnie and Clyde” rapper at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas in August 2005. She joined him again at the Shawn Carter Foundation Mother’s Day Event, hosted at the 40/40 Club in May 2013; later that summer, she attended his Magna Carta Holy Grail release party.