What is the meaning of the song Empire State of Mind?

New York City has Frank Sinatra’s legendary “New York, New York,” Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” and the even more borough-centric tune with the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” among the many odes to the Big Apple.

Born and raised in the Bedford–Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, along with classmates Busta Rhyme, and the late rappers The Notorious B.I.G. and DMX, New York City was also a natural filament in Jay-Z’s music, and in 2009 he released an homage to his hometown with “Empire State of Mind,” which hit No. 1 and earned two Grammy Awards for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration and Best Rap Song.

“I’m the New Sinatra”

“Empire State of Mind” is a worthy successor of New York City song classics, capturing its hidden corners, residents, celebrity, smells, and the glitz and glamour and grit of the city through Jay-Z’s scattered homages pulled from his own life—from Yankees games and gypsy cabs to the street he used to live on 560 State Street. He even references Sinatra’s great New York ode singing since I made it here, I can make it anywhere.

Yeah, I’m out that Brooklyn, now I’m down in Tribeca
Right next to De Niro, but I’ll be hood forever
I’m the new Sinatra, and since I made it here
I can make it anywhere, yeah, they love me everywhere
I used to cop in Harlem–hola, my Dominicanos (Dimelo!)
Right there up on Broadway, brought me back to that McDonald’s
Took it to my stash spot, 560 State Street
Catch me in the kitchen, like a Simmons whippin’ pastry
Cruisin’ down 8th Street, off-white Lexus
Drivin’ so slow, but BK is from Texas
Me? I’m out that Bed-Stuy, home of that boy Biggie
Now I live on Billboard and I brought my boys with me

Though the song specifically references people, places, and memories personally connected to the rapper, there’s also a clear message in the meaning that regardless of where one comes they should follow their dreams.

What is the meaning of the song Empire State of Mind?

Early Form

Originally written by Angela Hunte, who coincidentally grew up in the same Marcy Projects building as Jay-Z, and her songwriting partner Janet “Jnay” Sewell-Ulepic as a tribute to their hometown of New York City, the song was initially submitted to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation label. Jay-Z later rewrote the verses and kept the “New York” in the hook.

“When I first heard the track, I was sure it would be a hit,” said Jay-Z. “It was gorgeous. My instinct was to dirty it up, to tell stories of the city’s gritty side, to use stories about hustling and getting hustled to add tension to the soaring beauty of the chorus.”

Alicia Keys v. Mary J Blige

Released on Jay-Z’s 11th album The Blueprint 3, the single features piano and vocals by Alicia Keys, who is also credited as a co-writer along with Angela Hunte, Alexander Shuckburgh, Bert Keyes, Janet Sewell-Ulepic, and Sylvia Robinson. Jay-Z was seconds away from calling Mary J. Blige to sing on “Empire State of Mind” but thought of Keys when he was listening to the piano loops. Once on board, Keys also ended up reworking the bridge of the song.

In New York
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There’s nothin’ you can’t do
Now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand-new
Big lights will inspire you
Let’s hear it for New York 
New York, New York

Samples

The piano running throughout the song features a sample of The Moments’ 1970 single “Love on a Two-Way Street,” written by Sylvia Robinson and Burt Keyes.

New Anthems

Today, the song is played at various sports events, benefits, and other NYC events, still igniting the spirit of the Empire State.

Meaning

Big Apple Anthem

Is "Empire State of Mind" a new anthem—maybe even the new anthem—for New York City?

Over the years, the Big Apple has inspired countless odes and lyrics in its honor. There's just something about New York City that inspires song, apparently. 

Wikipedia's less-than-definitive "List of Songs About New York City" includes nearly a thousand titles. While tons of those songs are pretty obscure—"We Are New York and We Love Basketball" by Paulette LaMelle, anyone?—there's no denying that over the years we've seen plenty of top-notch New York songs from top-drawer New York artists. 

The A-list of old-school New York anthems might include the jazz standard "Autumn in New York," Frank Sinatra's legendary "New York, New York," and Billy Joel's classic piano song "New York State of Mind." From the hip-hop generation we have Nas' similarly titled but otherwise rather different "NY State of Mind," Ja Rule's "New York," and the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," among many, many more.

What makes each of those songs so powerful—and what makes Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" such a worthy successor to the crown—is the combination of the deeply personal and the universally iconic. The city at the heart of the song is both a real, gritty place and an idealized, flashy dream.

On one level, Jay-Z's New York is his New York. The verses of "Empire State of Mind" are littered with specific details from Jay's biography, from shout-outs to his wife Beyoncé Knowles—"BK is from Texas"—to his trendsetting adornment of the Yankee hat, right down to a mention of a real address he once lived at, "my stash spot, 560 State Street."

At the same time, Jay's New York, and the New York Alicia Keys sings about in the hook, is the same glittering metropolis of hopes and dreams that can be found in so many other songs. Especially in the self-conscious allusion to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," with the recapitulation of the famous lines:

If I can make it here
I can make it anywhere

Jay re-works these ones into:

Since I made it here
I can make it anywhere

And Jay-Z grounds himself in classical New York mythology.

The City Giveth and the City Taketh Away

That mythology is essentially a mythology of a city that offers great challenges and equally great opportunities. This is the New York of the Ellis Island immigrant dream, the New York that has been luring in ambitious young people from the country for 200 years. And this is the New York of so many iconic songs.

The jazz classic "Autumn in New York," for example, most famously performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, describes that season in the city as one offering the "promise of love," yet it is also "mingled with pain" of missed chances and love lost.

Similarly, Billy Joel's piano song "New York State of Mind" depicts New York as the only place where a singer can capture the true essence of the "rhythm and blues," even if that essence sounds pretty melancholy.

Meanwhile, for rappers Nas and Ja Rule, the two faces of New York become even more pronounced as the city becomes the arena for the most extreme kind of gangster wars. In his 2004 song "New York," Ja Rule talks about having "a hundred guns, a hundred clips" just "'cause [he's] from New York." The way he phrases it makes you think. Would he have a hundred guns and a hundred clips if he was living elsewhere?

In Nas' hip-hop classic "NY State of Mind," the city's ghetto neighborhoods are like mazes with "black rats trapped." The city becomes a terrifying place, as he writes, "I think of crime when I'm in a New York state of mind." 

But once again, even the challenge of the criminality of New York has its promises. For Nas, the life of New York is one essential to the idea of Blackness. Nas' "peoples come back, Black" from the streets, as if to say that the soul of the African-American community can only really be found in its transcendence of everyday urban problems like crime and poverty. 

The "New York state of mind" is a Black one for Nas.

Okay, so that's the musical background upon which "Empire State of Mind" unfolds. So, what's Jay-Z doing in the song? 

We already know that he wants to acknowledge the New York mythology, but from the second the verses begin, Jay-Z puts himself on top of it all. Jay-Z "made it" in New York. He's done. That simple tense change to the most famous line in the most famous song about "New York, New York" epitomizes Jay-Z's attitude in "Empire State of Mind." 

He's not dreaming about what the city has to offer. He's already got it. 

He's already "out that Brooklyn," where the real-life youngster known as Shawn Carter grew up in the grim Marcy Projects. Life is easy, "crusin' down 8th Street," "sittin' courtside, Knicks and Nets give me high fives." 

Jay-Z's life is the life of luxury that Nas equates with legendary gangster Al Capone in "NY State of Mind." Jay co-owns an NBA team, he lives in Robert De Niro's TriBeCa neighborhood—De Niro's gangster roles in The Godfather: Part II, Raging Bull, and Taxi Driver being idolized by teenage boys everywhere, of course—but still, Jay hasn't sold out. In fact he thrives on his roots.

It seems that Jay-Z is entirely aware of this because his rhymes become instructive by the end of the song. "Empire State of Mind" explicitly teaches its listeners the two-sided lessons of greater promises and greater challenges. The third verse links up with Alicia Keys' chorus lyric "bright lights will inspire you," warning "lights is blinding."

Lights is blinding, girls need blinders
So they can step out of bounds quick, the sidelines is,
Lined with casualties, who sip the life casually
Then gradually become worse; don't bite the apple, Eve

And there it is again: the forbidden fruit, the iconic symbol of good and evil. 

Jay-Z warns us that the allure of the Big Apple—the dream of "New York, New York" and "Autumn in New York"—should be screened through a caution more familiar to Ja Rule and Nas. For everyone who gets to be "Spiked out" courtside at a Nets game, a dozen more are destined to become one of the "casualties" lining the city's gritty streets.

And both have to respect the place where these stories all play out. So, "Let's hear it for New York."

What is the meaning of Empire State?

noun. the state of New York (used as a nickname).

Why is it called Empire State of Mind?

The song's title, similar to New York State of Mind, is a wordplay and tribute to New York's nickname (Empire State) and could also be a reference to Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York City.

What is the meaning of New York state of mind?

He wrote this song about his love for New York, which he missed while he was away. When Joel appeared on The Howard Stern Show in 2010, he said that he wrote the song on the day he moved back from California to New York.

What is the mood of Empire State of Mind?

The mood of the song is a positive. Jay Z talks about his life in the past and compares it to his life in the present which is a great success.