The relevancy of an artist's age is an issue of hot debate in the Hip-Hop community, and with the release of his latest album, The Blueprint 3, Jay-Z found himself in the middle of the argument.

In an interview with Canada's CBC on Monday (November 2), the Hip-Hop mogul spoke on the difficulty for older rappers to appeal to the younger crowd saying, "The challenge with rap music is, you know, the place where it's white hot is with 16 and 15-year-olds. (Therefore) You have a lot of people who are 30-something, 30-plus, still recording music like they were 15 because that's where the most urgent buyer is."

"If I'm 35 years old and I'm talking like I'm 15 - the kids at 15, they change slang every week. They know that's not being authentic. I live in Teaneck, New Jersey, somewhere, I'm not on the streets," said Jay, whose 40th birthday is coming up in December.

He also cites lack of creativity as the real issue saying, "In the beginning, it was at its purest form because everyone was struggling. All great music and all great art, I believe, comes from pain. As Hip-Hop started to get successful, and really successful - you had these guys coming from these neighborhoods that were now millionaires - it's tough to draw back to that place (of creativity)."

"Now people are having these types of feelings: 'You're sounding lazy, you're sounding formulaic, you're sounding like the same subject matter. So what are you going to do?' Now we're facing that challenge to make great music like every other genre."

As for his solution Jay states, "My whole thing is to expand the audience and the genre of music in any way, because music is music."

- By Sharniece Moore