Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z is reintroducing himself as JAŸ-Z.
The 56-year-old rapper quietly revised the spelling of his stage name to include an umlaut over the “Y,” in an announcement that he would perform with The Roots at their Philadelphia music festival in May.
JAŸ-Z’s name has also been changed on all streaming platforms — including Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube — to feature the umlaut, a punctuation mark consisting of two dots placed over a vowel to signal a change in sound.
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The name change brings back the punctuation mark first seen on the Hard Knock Life rapper’s 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, which marks its 30th anniversary this year.
The pronunciation of his name will remain the same, as the umlaut it merely a stylistic change.
JAŸ-Z has changed his name before. In 2013, he got rid of the hyphen in his name.
“The hyphen was really big back in the day. It’s not useful anymore. You change with the times,” he said during an appearance on Big Boy’s Neighborhood in 2013.
When he released his 4:44 album in 2017, he re-formatted his stage name to bring back the hyphen and appear as “JAY-Z.”
“Jay Z is now a relic of the past, consigned to the dustbin of history. In its place stands JAY-Z, now with the hyphen back in its place and the whole name in all caps,” his team said in a statement at the time.
It was recently announced that JAŸ-Z will perform two back-to-back hometown shows at Yankee Stadium this summer. The concerts will commemorate the anniversaries of his debut album Reasonable Doubt and his 2001 release The Blueprint, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.
His first show is scheduled for Friday, July 10, where he’ll pay homage to Reasonable Doubt. Then on Saturday, July 11, he will return for a performance featuring hits from The Blueprint, including Izzo (H.O.V.A.), Girls, Girls, Girls and Heart of the City (No Love).
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