Jay-Z Sets September 18 Premiere For JAŸ-Z In 8 With New Trailer

Jay-Z has a new official trailer out today for JAŸ-Z In 8, finally putting a firm date on his eight-part HBO documentary series. The new preview keeps the focus on Jay-Z and Rick Rubin as they unpack the thinking behind his songs, career choices and personal history.

HBO says the talks move through Jay-Z’s songwriting, personal experiences, career and studio methods for making records across the eight episodes. The project comes from HBO Documentary Films and Tetragrammaton, with Jay-Z, Daniel Kaluuya and Rubin serving as executive producers.

Leila Mattimore and David Rohde are producers, while HBO describes the filmed conversations between Jay-Z and Rubin as years in the making. The series was first teased in June with black-and-white footage that showed Rubin pushing Jay-Z to explain how hardship shaped his creative voice.

“Everyone had the same experience, except I was the one that could stand on the soapbox and, like, articulate what we were going through,” Jay-Z says in the teaser.

Rubin says, “Without the pain, you wouldn’t have done the work.”

Jay-Z answers, “The pain, you don’t say it’s necessary, you don’t say you need it, but if it’s there – you use it.”

The exchange points toward a series built less like a standard biography and more like an extended conversation about how Jay-Z thinks through his work. Rubin brings history to that discussion because he produced “99 Problems” for The Black Album and later directed McCartney 3,2,1 for Hulu.

The documentary also lands during a major anniversary run for Jay-Z, who marked 30 years of Reasonable Doubt and 25 years of The Blueprint in 2026. AllHipHop previously reported that Jay-Z’s three-night Yankee Stadium run set attendance records before he added more dates in London and Los Angeles.

That timing gives the documentary a current frame instead of treating Jay-Z’s catalog only as history while his anniversary campaign remains active. HBO plans to roll out two installments every Friday, spreading the eight-part series across four weeks and continuing through October 9.

The first two episodes of JAŸ-Z In 8 arrive on HBO and HBO Max on September 18.