Jay-Z Is Posting Official Lyric Videos for The Blueprint. The One With Eminem Has Nearly 40 Times the Views of “Izzo.”
Jay-Z's YouTube channel uploaded lyric videos for every song on The Blueprint for the album's 25th anniversary. Three weeks in, the only track with a guest verse is lapping the hit single: “Renegade” sits at about 439,000 views while “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” has about 11,000.
By @bradleymines ·
The Blueprint is Jay-Z's album and "Izzo" was the hit. But three weeks into his channel's new lyric video run, the song people are actually clicking is the one where Eminem shows up.
On September 11, the 25th anniversary of The Blueprint, Jay-Z's official YouTube channel started posting official lyric videos for the album. Every track got one, including the hidden bonus cuts "Lyrical Exercise" and "Girls, Girls, Girls (Part 2)." The channel has kept going since, adding lyric videos from other eras like "Hard Knock Life," "Big Pimpin'" and "Numb / Encore."
On paper, the Blueprint batch should be led by "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)". It was the lead single, it reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it was Jay-Z's first solo song to crack the top 10. Instead, as of October 4, the "Izzo" lyric video sits at about 11,000 views, the lowest of all 15 Blueprint uploads. "Renegade", track 12 and the only song on the album with a credited guest, is at about 439,000.
"Renegade" ft. Eminem, the most watched video in Jay-Z's Blueprint lyric video series.
Every Blueprint lyric video, ranked
Here is every Blueprint lyric video on Jay-Z's channel as of the morning of October 4, 2026, about three weeks after upload. Counts are rounded the way YouTube displays them.
Views in thousands. Source: Jay-Z's official YouTube channel, October 4, 2026.
"Renegade" alone accounts for about 44 percent of all views across the 15 videos. The next closest, "Never Change" and "U Don't Know," are each around 90,000, roughly a fifth of its count. "Takeover," the song that started the Nas war, has about 47,000.
Why "Izzo" looks so low, and why that only explains part of it
To be fair to "Izzo," the lyric video is not where people go for it. Jay-Z's channel already carries the official "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" music video, which sits at about 5.2 million views. Anyone searching for the song lands there first.
The "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" lyric video, the lowest viewed upload in the Blueprint series so far.
"Renegade" never had that. It was never released as a single and never got a music video, so this lyric video is effectively the first official visual Jay-Z's channel has ever posted for it. Some of those 439,000 views are fans who finally have an official upload to go to.
But Spotify shows the same pattern without the music video factor. According to Kworb's tracking of Jay-Z's Spotify catalog on October 3, "Renegade" has about 174 million streams, the most of any Blueprint song. "Izzo" has about 96 million and "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)" about 93 million. On a platform where every song gets the same treatment, the Eminem collaboration still leads by close to double.
It is not just a Blueprint thing either. Among the newer lyric videos Jay-Z's channel has posted since, the leader is "Numb / Encore," his collaboration with Linkin Park, at about 242,000 views in eight days.
The Eminem song on a Jay-Z album
"Renegade" was not even built as a Jay-Z song. Eminem produced it with Luis Resto, and it started as a Bad Meets Evil track with Royce da 5'9". When Interscope would only allow one Eminem collaboration on Royce's album, Royce picked a different song and "Renegade" sat unreleased. Jay-Z then recorded his verses in place of Royce's, and Eminem mixed the final version.
The song has carried a debate ever since. Nas used it against Jay-Z on "Ether," arguing that Eminem outrapped him on his own album, and fans have argued over who won the track for 25 years.
It also got a fresh push this summer. At Jay-Z's Blueprint 25th anniversary show at Yankee Stadium on July 11, Eminem came out to perform "Renegade" with him before running into "Lose Yourself." A fan video of that moment on YouTube has around 353,000 views on its own.
What we could not verify
YouTube view counts move every day, so the numbers above are a snapshot from the morning of October 4. "Renegade" is dated September 11, 2026, and the rest of the Blueprint batch shows the same age on the channel, but Jay-Z's team has not announced the series or said how long it will run. We also cannot see how much of the "Renegade" count comes from Eminem's fanbase versus Jay-Z's, since YouTube does not make that public.
What is clear: on Jay-Z's own channel, celebrating Jay-Z's own album, the most watched song so far is the one with Eminem on it.