Nearly four years ago, news spread that Jay Z, ahem, JAY-Z, made the career-changing move of dropping the hyphen from his two-decade-old stage name, thanks to former Billboard editor and current Village Voice and Rolling Stone editor Joe Levy.
A month later, the Brooklyn-bred rap mogul called into L.A. radio show Big Boy's Neighborhood, saying the hyphen had been disappeared. "That was like three years ago, I don't know how that story resurfaced, but I guess it was a slow news day," he said. "The hyphen was really big back in the day. It's not useful anymore. I had umlauts over one of the letters; I removed that too."
Now, here we are in 2017, and guess what? The hyphen is back, according to an initial report from Pitchfork. Jay Z, I mean, JAY-Z's rep confirmed the stylizing of his rap moniker with a hyphen and all capital letters, hence, the new name "JAY-Z."