In an interview with MTV, Jay-Z reveals that the last time he picked up a pen and paper to write his lyrics was back in 1996 when he dropped Reasonable Doubt. Chris Brown and Sean Kingston even cite Jay as an inspiration for their own songwriting processes. Hmm..no wonder why Sean Kingston’s songs sound like crap. Anyway, here’s what Jay had to say about writing.

“I’ve inspired a generation of bad writers. It just felt better [the way I do it now]. In my mind, I said, ‘OK, I’m gonna sit down and I’mma just write it and really do this thing a certain way.’ But your natural process is your process. It’s difficult to go back to what you was doing when you was 15, 16 years old. My process is different now. It sounds great on paper, like ‘I’mma sit down, I’m going to write the entire album like I did before.’ But once you get back in the studio and you’ve been doing this process for years and years now, so it just felt natural to do it the way I’ve been doing it: no paper, no pen, just listen to the music.”

Jay compares rapping to Basketball.

“Basketball players play basketball their whole life, they practice every day. It only makes sense. You can only get better. The repetition. The more you do it, the better you do.”

Well, I guess picking up a pen and paper is a bit too much for some artists. I ain’t gonna front like they don’t put out some hot ish. Anyway, one of Jay’s nephews is an aspiring rapper, so Uncle Jay also tells his ass to write as much as he possibly can. View video clip below.