The Hyphen Makes a Comeback to JAY-Z's Name

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."

All the hyphen hoopla stems from the rapper's new trailer for his upcoming album 4:44, which dropped Sunday night and shows his name as "JAY:Z" to match the colon in the album title. The album will be available to Tidal and Sprint customers on June 30, which means plenty of time to retrain your fingers into typing out "JAY-Z."

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