Jay-Z is a big fan of Kurt Cobain, even if the late grunge rocker temporarily "stopped" Jay's genre from expanding.

"It was weird because hip-hop was becoming this force, then grunge music stopped it for one second, ya know? Those 'hair bands' were too easy for us to take out; when Kurt Cobain came with that statement it was like, 'We got to wait awhile.'"

Jay also traces the rise of grunge to the failure of those same hair bands to enthrall young music fans. "First we got to go back to before grunge and why grunge happened," he says. "'Hair bands' dominated the airwaves and rock became more about looks than about actual substance and what it stood for -- the rebellious spirit of youth ... That's why 'Teen Spirit' rang so loud because it was right on point with how everyone felt."

Given Jay's recent concert run at the Barclays Center, the home of the newly christened Brooklyn Nets (the team he's a minority owner of), Jay knows a thing or two about dominating culture. (Just yesterday, the rapper announced that his performances at Barclays will be released as an album.)

The two hip-hop greats were recently in the studio with R&B phenom Frank Ocean, according to Pharrell's Twitter: