Jay-Z inducted into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Dave Chappelle

Hip hop legend and rap icon Jay-Z has officially been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

On Sat., Oct. 30, Jay-Z along with a star-studded class including Foo Fighters, Carole King, Tina Turner, The Go-Gos and Todd Rundgren, Kraftwerk, Charley Patton, Gil Scott-Heron, LL Cool J, Billy Preston, Randy Rhoads, and Clarence Avant, have officially been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

In his acceptance speech, Jay-Z expressed what hip hop means to him and took the time to thank all those who paved the way for him.

“Thank you, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, for this incredible honor. And you know, growing up, we didn’t think we could be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We were told that hip-hop was a fad. Much like punk rock, it gave us this anticulture, this subgenre, and there were heroes in it,” Jay-Z said during his Hall of Fame speech. “When thinking about what I was going to say tonight, these heroes just kept coming to my mind, Rakim and Big Daddy Kane and KRS-One and Chuck D, and, of course, a fellow inductee, LL Cool J. I watch these guys, and they have big gold chains and leather and sometimes even the red, black, green medallions and whatever they wore, everybody would wear the next day. I was like, “That’s what I want to do. I want to be like those guys.” And so I set out on my journey.”

Jay-Z was inducted into the Hall of Fame by comedian Dave Chappelle, who praised his friend and expressed how much he means not only to music and hip hop, but Black culture.

"Being Black in America is not as easy as it looks. It’s always, 'don’t do this, or else,' 'don’t say this, or else.' We do it anyway. Whenever we have to,” Chappelle said. “We don’t have a complicated emotional vocabulary. We have to make everything look easy. And this man is a diamond that was born of pressure. To coin a phrase that fellow Hall of Famer made — Tupac Shakur called it a rose that rose from the concrete. That to us is what hip hop is.”

The 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will air on HBO Nov. 20.